Deep Freeze Issues, Part One

With the cold temps, we got hit with a double whammy. We have two furnaces in the house, one in the basement that covers the basement and first floor; a second on the second floor.

The second floor furnace appeared to be backing up. The condensate line was spilling over a bit, and the theory we had was that the main condensate line was frozen somewhere. The condensate line runs along our North wall, and our guess was that it froze somewhere along that wall in the basement.

A clear bit of tubing, showing that the condensate was building up.

An open bit of PVC, where the condensate was backing up. This was left open intentionally, with the idea that if the primary condensate line backed up for whatever reason (debris, etc)… it would spill out at this point, and spill over.

The up side is that the furnace itself is sitting inside a large drain pan. And that drain pan is connected to a second condensate line, meant to be a backup.

We weren’t sure if the second condensate line from the drain pan was working. So talking with Bob, we ended up pouring water into the drain pan… to check/verify that it was draining successfully.

Liz was watching in the basement, but didn’t see any water emptying out at the end of the PVC.

Unfortunately, what ended up happening was that we started seeing water coming from the ceiling. It wasn’t clear exactly why, but the water we poured into the drain pan was spilling over somewhere in the ceiling joists… and started coming through.

Luckily, Liz spotted this in time – and was able to pull back our carpeting and put a bucket underneath. We had some leaking for a bit, but it eventually subsided.

For us, this was disconcerting. Because it meant that both the primary and secondary condensate lines were not working.

Another issue: our hot water heater was going out. We’d been experiencing odd behavior over the last week or so: needing to crank the hot water more and more, experiencing shorter showers before the hot water ran out.

Generally, hot water heaters have a flashing indicator as part of their electronic component (called the “brain box,” apparently). Usually one flash every few seconds indicates things are operating normally. Other flashes have a code, indicating a specific problem.

Well for us, there were no flashing lights whatsoever. Which was very disturbing.

I was able to find a few tutorials online, and was able to reset the water heater. And it seemed like things were fine. Revived it, and hoped it would last the night.

Related:
A Temporary Bypass