Corn Furnace Update

I'm sorry I said I hate contractors. That was a little extreme. Like I said there are a few that we couldn't live without and are very pleasant to work with. But unfortunately we have found that to be a very small number. For awhile we figured it was because we had made the mistake of not hiring the expensive contractor. This corn furnace has taught us that price does not a good experience make. We've come to the conclusion that for us doing the work ourselves has been much more rewarding than hiring it done. That being said if the furnace continues to not keep up we have decided that we will purchase another heating manifold and install it ourselves. So no, I don't hate contractors, I hate working with them.

I think like todd said in the last post it was a case of bad communication. The plumbers we had out to do the work seemed experienced in what they were doing, and were much better (honest?) in answering our questions. I wish that we could have dealt with them from the beginning instead of the owner/salesperson combo we talked to. So maybe that's a secret. You need to stick with smaller/local businesses. But then again that's bitten us in the butt too. And as for recommendations we learned how unfortunate those could be with our roof debacle. I don't know what the answer is. I just have to go on with the belief that people who mislead others are going to have to answer for that someday, and be happy in that knowledge.

Thank you matt for the offer of help. As of right now I'm hoping we won't need it. As for a cleaner we were told that we wouldn't need one with this system. Which was another reason why we bought it.

When the plumbers came back out they removed the solid auger we had been using and replaced it with a hallow one. They said they don't install solid ones on corn furnaces anymore and don't know how that one made it on our unit. -sigh- It seems to have made the difference. Tim had noted that even how it burns seems better and we haven't had a problem with it going out since. This is the longest it has consecutively run ever. My dad made a good observation. He said that the auger probably makes the difference because a hallow one wouldn't conduct heat as much as a solid one. The solid one was probably conducting the heat and causing condensation (which he had noticed outside the tube and thought was strange) which caused the feed to gum up.

The fact that it is now running after the replacement makes me feel better because these guys had my husband and I feeling like a couple of morons. They kept telling us how they had retired farmers who ran the thing with no problems and didn't understand why we had problems. Well, from what we can tell now it's because YOUR auger.

Other minor issues you should know if you are thinking about getting one. They are NOT maintenance free. The salesperson made it sound like you just had to clean out once a month or so and otherwise you didn't have to pay any attention to it. Wrong. We have to poke around at the fire twice a day. Tim does it first thing in the morning before leaving for work and then in the evening after supper. So don't expect to take an overnight away and it still be working when you return. That being said the technician we had out here said what the owner told us about having someone around to watch it constantly is a bunch of baloney. That people are able to leave there stoves and go to friends houses for play-dates and return to find them working. We've also found that you can't adjust the thermostat. I'm one of those people who loves it cold when the sleep. So I had a programmable thermostat that dropped way down at night and then warmed it self back up before I was up in the morning. We can't do that right now. In fact, if we mess with the thermostat setting at all it seems to lead to problems so we no longer touch it. I don't know if this we be better once we have the shed built and have a heaver load on the system. I'll have to let you know.