Propane furnace not igniting

[house92]

I don't think my propane furnace is igniting every time. I say "I think" because it is difficult to tell. It is a combo unit placed outside. I was lying in bed last night and heard the rumble as it attempted to come on, but then it just stopped. When I woke up this morning, the house was warm and it seemed to work during the day. As i sit here now, I notice the house is a bit chilly and the furnace doesn't seem to have kicked on for a while.

Why would the propane furnace work most of the time but not all the time? Is this a sign of serious trouble? Does it just need to be cleaned?

 

[Wuzzat?]

It sounds like an intermittent problem. If you can reliably reproduce the symptom you or someone else has a chance of fixing this. Otherwise you just clean things and make sure that the connections that could cause this symptom are not corroded.

If it happens every other day on average, then you'd need six consecutive trouble free days to be virtually certain the problem is fixed.

A simple circuit with a few $2 relays from Hosfelt.com could alert you when the problem shows but I'd need a furnace schematic and the sequence of events during startup.
I did something like this to find what turned out to be an intermittently defective clutch relay for my '89 Sentra. It was four LEDs mounted on the dash, each one monitoring a different point in the cranking circuit. As it happened, when I first hooked up the circuit to test it the problem showed up, as indicated by one LED not lighting.

 

[house92]

Thanks for the reply. It stopped working at all, so i had to call the service man. He said the burners were rusty. He cleaned the burners and flame sensor and it works fine now. He said, however, that due to it's age that if it happened again, those parts would have to be replaced.

 

[Wuzzat?]

It stopped working

That means you can reliably reproduce the symptom!

The avg. age for HVAC in the US is 21 +/- 3 years with max = 81 years according to an informal survey I did. My Bryant is from '82 but I do most of my own work [new inducer motor, new blower motor, new gas valve, sanded corroded connection on the control board].

For general equip. repair/replace guidelines see
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0013L2E1S/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20