Heating & Leveling

[Gail]

Hi,

I need help heating my place. I bought the home in June of this year and have not had to worry about heat until this week. I know there is central heating. There is a guage in the hallway. I've turned on the heat and nothing happens.

I also have a built in fireplace that can be electric or burn wood and I haven't a clue how that works. Last night I flipped the switch to turn on the fireplace and air came out but it wasn't hot. The home was manufactured in 1990. I've never used central heating before. Any suggestions would be great.

I know that one side of my home is not level. It's probably lower by at least an inch or so. What problems can this cause?

Thank you for any help you can offer.

Gail

[Mark Bower]

Best advice would be to have a furnace technician come in and inspect everything to be sure everything is cleaned and working properly for the upcoming heating season. Then the technician can show you how to fire-up everything. Otherwise check for breakers that are off, gas lines that are turned off, switches on the furnace that are off. Pilot lights may need to be lit. etc etc.

Mark
You gotta see my repair manual!

[Gail]

Thank you Mark.

[Karen P]

I imagine that you have a pilot light on your heater if it is a gas heating unit. This is the second winter to be in our home. When we turned the heat on, it would not come on. The pilot light had gone out since last winter. (Sometimes a strong wind going under the home can "blow" it out). I suggest you get someone that knows a little something about it to check it out and light your pilot light.

You also state that your fireplace can be electric or wood. I am confused by your statement. If it is electric you would need some electric logs in it or you would need to burn wood logs for a real fire. I suspect that what you turned on was the "blower". We have a real wood fireplace, but also have a little switch to turn on a blower. The metal vent area right above our fireplace gets pretty warm with the hot fires my husband burns. By turning on the blower, air is circulated around the firebox and does get warm (only if you have a fire in the fireplace), and the metal vent area is cooled down. If you only had cool air blowing, you were blowing cool air around a cool firebox, blowing cool air around a hot firebox results in warm air being blown.

Good luck.