How a Broken Furnace Can Contaminate Your In-Home Air

When we think about a broken furnace, we often think about it in the sense that the furnace is not working at all or as well it could be in order to heat your home fully. Certainly, this is a problem on colder nights; but a "broken" furnace doesn't always mean it isn't functioning, and not realizing that your furnace could be broken and still functioning could be letting dangerous pollution into your home.

Often, pollution from the furnace doesn't come from a problem, but rather a lack of maintenance. Every year, you should have a maintenance technician out to your home so that they can check the furnace and ductwork. As homes are typically not well ventilated during the winter, to keep out the cold; dust, carbon, and other contaminants often stick around. Said contaminates are blown and settle into the air or carpeting, thus affecting the overall air quality in your home. Much of the time, simply changing the air filter can prevent a lot of contaminants from entering the home. However, if you have breeches in the ductwork, then an air filter may not completely stop pollutants until that breach is fixed.

Of course, the major worry about a furnace polluting your air is the silent killer – carbon monoxide. Usually, the appliance functions to keep this out of the home, but one crack in the heat exchanger or the combustion chamber and it can enter the system, and then enter your home. Therefore, it is so crucial to have your furnace inspected every year or at least have a carbon monoxide detector installed in your home to catch a problem before it becomes deadly. While these issues can be costly to repair, they can prevent something devastating from happening. Your air quality could make your family sick, but carbon monoxide is on another level of danger.

If you want cleaner and healthier indoor air then please do not hesitate to contact us here at Kent Heating and Air Conditioning, Inc. - we're here to help!

The Three Functions of the Fuel Nozzle in an Oil Furnace

An oil furnace contains a number of distinct components, each with its own sophisticated role to play. Yet none of these components are required to do quite as much as the fuel nozzle. If you would like to learn more about the way your oil furnace works, read on. This article will discuss the three main functions of the fuel nozzle.

Atomization 

If fuel were to simply enter the combustion chamber drop by drop, your furnace would not be able to generate much heat at all. In order for efficient combustion to take place, the oil must be atomized into a fine, air-born mist. This hastens the rate of vaporization that is necessary for combustion to take place. Atomization is accomplished by the fuel nozzle, which breaks the fuel up into microscopic droplets.

Metering

The fuel nozzle is responsible for ensuring more than just the size of the oil particles entering the furnace; it is also used to control the amount of fuel entering at any given time. A particular fuel nozzle must be designed to meet the specific needs of a given furnace. Thus it is important to know the optimum flow rate of your furnace before replacing an old or worn-out fuel nozzle.

Patterning 

Finally, a fuel nozzle is designed so as to introduce oil to the combustion chamber at a specific angle, and in a specific spray pattern. These qualities vary from burner to burner. The spray angle may vary anywhere from 30 degrees to 90 degrees, depending on both the size of the combustion chamber and the air pattern of the burner.

We encourage you to contact us with any questions or service needs you may have.