The forced-air furnace in your Peachtree City area home is an effective and safe way to heat your home, but do you know how it actually works? Understanding the basic operation of your furnace will help you troubleshoot problems, as well as communicate with your HVAC technician in case service is required.

A forced-air furnace has several main components that work together to provide heat for your home:

Thermostat: When the air in your home reaches a temperature lower than the setting on your thermostat, the burner on your furnace turns on. When the temperature reaches the thermostat setting, it turns off.

Burner: The burner on your forced-air furnace, fueled by gas or oil, creates combustion gases to heat your air.

Heat exchanger: The heat exchanger transfers heat from the burner flames to the supply air, which is then circulated into your home. The combustion gases produced by the burner are vented outside.

Blower: The blower sucks in cool air from the home for the combustion process and sends it across the heat exchanger to be heated. The blower then sends the warm air through your ductwork into your rooms.

Air ducts: Cool air from your home enters the return ducts and makes its way to the furnace, where it’s heated. The heated air travels through the warm air ducts and into your home through the registers, which control the flow and direction of the air into your rooms.

Combination fan and limit control: This type of control has three settings to control the blower on your furnace:

• The FAN ON setting makes sure the blower doesn’t turn on before there’s warm air to send to your home.
• The FAN OFF setting keeps the blower running until the heat exchanger cools down and there’s no more warm air to send out of the system.
• The LIMIT setting is a safety control that shuts off the burner if the temperature in the warm air plenum becomes too hot.

For more expert advice about how your forced-air furnace works, please contact us at Powers Heating & Air, serving the Peachtree City area with a high level of customer satisfaction.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Peachtree City, Georgia and surrounding areas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).

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