Power companies are to blame for some of this. Part of an article from a provider, Duke Energy; “An energy vampire is a device that continues to use energy and drain power, even when it is turned off. They lurk in your home, taking the form of phone chargers and cable boxes, computer cords, coffee pots and HVAC equipment . These phantom energy suckers can account for as much as 20% of your monthly electricity bill.” Yikes, 20%! I better flip my breaker. What the energy provider forgot to tell the homeowners, every time you flip that breaker, it weaken. Certainly not the best place to de-energize a device. Great vid, g-man. You are the best.
they targeted all the "junk" electronic devices more specifically, in which homes are stuffed full of them now days...... granted people are sheeple and only understand and hear what they want to ;)
Another analogy would be leaving the light on in your oven while it's in use. You can see what you're baking continuously, and the heat generated by the bulb isn't going to waste.
I understand your thought process when dealing with the lady who had the electric heat furnace. But just as some people turn down their thermostat at night to save money I believe the lady was turning off her electric furnace to save money not just turning off the control transformer. She associated the hum with the unit being on or off. On meant her electric bill would be higher... off meant it would be lower. Obviously if the furnace did cycle on during the night it would use more electric than the control transformer. This is the first video of yours I have watched. You do seem to have a good knowledge of the business. Thanks for taking the time. I will be watching more of your videos.
1979! breakers from that era broke them-selves, started fires and didn't shut off in a timely fashion... especially federal pacific, may as well have had a fuse panel and with 30 Amp time delay's in every hole, even they opened faster :))
Thank you brother my heater has a hum from the transformer and I thought it was using a lot of power to. Thank you for pointing this out. God bless you
I had my furnace checked today and yes it is old - but within 5 minutes was told I had a cracked heat exchanger and he had to :"lock out my furnace" and then he drilled a hole in my ductwork and put a carbon monoxide detector and kept moving it around and then said I had a leak. When I got upset and started to cry he left the furnace on and said "I won't turn it off" but I am going to put a tag on it to say that I did. SO what the heck!
That story reminds me of someone who thought that GFCI receptacles drew 30 watts each all the time. I told him that if it was drawing that much power, it would not take long to melt.
@@grayfurnaceman Me neither, but it got me wondering how much power a GFCI actually draws. I tried testing it, but the current draw seems too low for my amp clamp to reliably measure.
lol @ 30 watts, it would be a mini space-heater!!! hot to touch after minutes and molten plastic and wall fire comes to mind... just tell them to go feel an old fashioned night light bulb, then a 40 watt or 60 watt light bulb, then go feel whatever device they think is drawing so much power. they'll probably have a clue after they get their burnt hand/fingers cooled off :))
@@averyalexander2303 you'll have to test it with a ammeter/dvom in series on the hot feed wire. I'd guess on them all being well under 2 watts, more realistically I'd imagine 1/2 a watt. if it's not warm to touch, then very lower power usage. I have no GFCI's laying around close by in the house, I'm not digging in the garage (22F outside), nor will I un-wire one just to test lol. I always use low power night light bulbs as an example to people.
Thank you for the information. Makes sense..... my furnace does not run very often while my neighbors does.... houses are about the same though I use more gas with the furnace running less often compared.
@@JoeLinux2000 good thinking, huge temperature swings can and does often use more energy to recover.... which is why I'm against having huge temperature setbacks programmed in. it takes time for the structure and all materials within to reacclimate, meanwhile burning extra energy for a longer period that just keeping it heated to start with. you really have to do heat load and loss calculations for an answer if it's economical or not, most often the answer is NO and your far better off spending money on having insulation added. I'm not talking about a 3 to 4F setback, but the nutters that do 15 to 20F or full shutdowns nightly ;)
it could also be due to water heater, clothes dryer and oven, if their gas. examples, you have a hot water leak? take long showers/baths or always a bath vs. shower, factor in the number of people in the household? do laundry, wash dishes, cook very often? leave or have windows and doors open very often (them pesky kids!)
Question about gas mixture in extreme cold, it is minus 40 celius windchill here right now and ive noticed my flames have quite alot of orange in them and flicker quite a bit, my 95% combustion intake is vented outside, i figured maybe cause of the denser air it was creating a lean condition so i took off my burner cover and plugged the intake with a sock outside so it would only use inside air and the flames went back to mostly blue and steady but as soon as i put cover back on and removed sock flames went back to orange mix and flickering, my question is, is this normal in extreme cold to create a lean condition and will it damage my exchanger or do i have to get pressure checked when its this cold
First, wind chill is not a temp reading. Its an index. Use the actual temp. Extreme cold will create a rich condition. I can't say I have ever seen this problem. Are you sure the vent and combustion air inlet are both clear of ice and snow? GFM
I had a woman that wanted me to turn off the breaker for the lights in her crawlspace even tho it had a pull string I tried to explain it's not using electricity if it's turned off but she wasn't having it lol
its 3/10/2019; I have a Rheem Criterion 2, (model# rgdg-10eamer) with a bad heat exchanger its out and I can not find a part number on it. Could you please help out. The furnace is over 20 years old. thank you.
ugh, does she also unplug her usb phone charger too?? as an electrician, i am never surprised at what people think electricity is. our educational system is broken. also breakers from federal pacific (stablok) and sylvania/zinsko have a 42% failure rate and most insurance companies will not insure a dwelling with either panel EVEN IF you replace all the breakers with cincinnati electric breakers which are rated for those panel and actually work. 😢
@@grayfurnaceman definitely should be replaced. Constantly flipping the breaker can make it come loose burning up the bus bar. I work for a property with 200 panels. Supposedly not able to refinance without replacing every panel. Getting bids but I dont think it will get done.
Tell a fat person that he/she just chowed down two large pizzas totaled 20K calories once a day but he/she would tell you----Yeh, but I eat only once a day and my roommate snacks all day on little peanuts...
Transformers will resonate at the frequency of the line voltage. In our case (the U.S.) it would hum at a frequency of 60hz. Some transformers are louder than others. Loudness of the hum has to with how the tranny is mounted or what it is mounted to. It can also be loud if the tranny is damaged, i.e. loose primary/secondary windings vibrating. There's not much difference between speakers and transformers.....vibrating coils of wire that emit sound.
i hum when i have a lotta Energy, too. but i stop Short of Breaking into song and dance, unless its AC DC, then ill do the Electric slide. Shocking, i know. thats all the puns i got fer now. love you muah bye!
Anytime electrons are moving in a wire you have friction and heat. Next time you are at your water wheel generating plant, put your hand on the generator you will see that it will be a bit warm.
He was talking about electricity in typical Electric Strip Heating applications. Clearly energy in various forms is converted back and forth to electric power anytime you are working with electricity. Energy can be in the form of heat or mechanical work (also called mechanical energy - eg kinetic energy or potential energy). Among other forms of energy are radiation, fusion, fossil fuels, chemical etc currently harnessed by man. Hydro electric is one of the most common conversions of mechanical energy to electricity where kinetic energy of water in motion is converted into three phase electricity. And then we convert part of that energy back to mechanical work in our blowers and compressors.
@@BarkerArt Similarly with wind power. The wind is produced by air pressure differences which are caused by solar heating and the heat content of the land or sea.
sounds like some people I know in summer with the AC on..... 15 fans in the house whirring on high and thinking their saving on electric.......................... I showed them the err in their thoughts, they called a month later with power bill reduced by $60+ a month, using only "3" fans to further circulate air, one of them being the HVAC blower.
Another myth along the same lines is that heatpumps are less efficient than heat strips in cold weather because they run all the time. So they turn to emergency heat below 40 when new ones can supply very usable heat at 10F. reality - heatpumps use a tiny fraction of the energy of heat strips and all the energy used by the compressor gets absorbed by the refrigerant and transferred to the house, whatever the outdoor coil picks up is free heat reducing the amount of electricity used by the heat strips. The strips only have to kick in a little, even if half the heat is supplied at a cop of 2 to 3 and the other half by the strips, there are huge savings compared to resistance heat. Like 10 years ago on a forum I was trying to convince someone to not shut the heatpump breaker in the winter in ontario, canada. He was convinced that the 3kw or so the heatpump was using below the balance point was being wasted due to seeing the temp slip with just the heatpump running. Stat was configured to allow heatpump to fall behind, shut it off, and bring on 100% strip heat until end of cycle - which caused the original complaint about heatpumps being "useless" in colder climates. (yah, as if strip heat is better) I couldn't get through to him.
"newer ones" that are perfectly installed, sealed and charged... now lets talk about the durability of the electronics and when they'll see that mythical "return of investment" they 98% chance will never recover anything and not worth the rebate/tax deduction, as it all ends up on their "credit" which they pay 10x interest in the long run. only time any of it is logical, is when it replaces ancient coal conversion furnaces that push more heat up the chimney than into the house and cost $300+ per month to operate. too many people fall for and spread the great lies that the bean counters, shysters and marketers sling daily, enough is enough time and it's for change in that department ;)
@@JoeLinux2000 Well, connecting both terminals of the transformer to ground, aka a form of grounding is a sure way to get rid of that annoying hum. It only works with the low volt fuse jumped out. I'm unsure of if having a transformer ungrounded causes it to make noise, but the form of grounding i was referring to lets out all the stored "hum" noise energy at once in the form of a loud buzz followed by a pop. sorry i have a bad sense of humour - but the trick works, you know.
hum can often be caused by "bad electrical loads" like hair dryers, curling irons and other device on "low/medium" settings. how? most run the "reduced output" levels by using the crude method of half wave power rectification by adding a single diode in line. example, the device on low now draws 6 amps "peak" on low, using 1 half the AC wave, which is at 60 cycles/hertz frequency. so instead of an equal load of 11 amps, it's now 6 amps load pulsed at 60 times a second, that makes many things on the same circuit or phase/leg of power feed "sing" more so the things with iron core and magnetically shielded transformers.
Power companies are to blame for some of this.
Part of an article from a provider, Duke Energy;
“An energy vampire is a device that continues to use energy and drain power, even when it is turned off. They lurk in your home, taking the form of phone chargers and cable boxes, computer cords, coffee pots and HVAC equipment . These phantom energy suckers can account for as much as 20% of your monthly electricity bill.” Yikes, 20%! I better flip my breaker.
What the energy provider forgot to tell the homeowners, every time you flip that breaker, it weaken. Certainly not the best place to de-energize a device.
Great vid, g-man. You are the best.
they targeted all the "junk" electronic devices more specifically, in which homes are stuffed full of them now days......
granted people are sheeple and only understand and hear what they want to ;)
Another analogy would be leaving the light on in your oven while it's in use. You can see what you're baking continuously, and the heat generated by the bulb isn't going to waste.
Thanks for your expertise ,great vid.Keep them coming.God bless.
Welcome
GFM
4:15 a bill of about $80... I was thinking man that's generous! But then you mentioned 1979 and it made much more sense lol. Thx for the video
I'm always fascinated by transformation of energy. Control transformers can have up to four energy transformations happening with no moving parts!
Thanks for another very informative video!
Welcome
GFM
I understand your thought process when dealing with the lady who had the electric heat furnace. But just as some people turn down their thermostat at night to save money I believe the lady was turning off her electric furnace to save money not just turning off the control transformer. She associated the hum with the unit being on or off. On meant her electric bill would be higher... off meant it would be lower. Obviously if the furnace did cycle on during the night it would use more electric than the control transformer.
This is the first video of yours I have watched. You do seem to have a good knowledge of the business. Thanks for taking the time. I will be watching more of your videos.
Glad you are here.
GFM
Been watching you for years...good show!
1979! breakers from that era broke them-selves, started fires and didn't shut off in a timely fashion... especially federal pacific, may as well have had a fuse panel and with 30 Amp time delay's in every hole, even they opened faster :))
You forgot Zinsco.
GFM
Thank you brother my heater has a hum from the transformer and I thought it was using a lot of power to. Thank you for pointing this out. God bless you
Glad it helped.
GFM
So humming uses very little energy???
I had my furnace checked today and yes it is old - but within 5 minutes was told I had a cracked heat exchanger and he had to :"lock out my furnace" and then he drilled a hole in my ductwork and put a carbon monoxide detector and kept moving it around and then said I had a leak. When I got upset and started to cry he left the furnace on and said "I won't turn it off" but I am going to put a tag on it to say that I did. SO what the heck!
That story reminds me of someone who thought that GFCI receptacles drew 30 watts each all the time. I told him that if it was drawing that much power, it would not take long to melt.
Never heard that one before.
GFM
@@grayfurnaceman Me neither, but it got me wondering how much power a GFCI actually draws. I tried testing it, but the current draw seems too low for my amp clamp to reliably measure.
lol @ 30 watts, it would be a mini space-heater!!! hot to touch after minutes and molten plastic and wall fire comes to mind...
just tell them to go feel an old fashioned night light bulb, then a 40 watt or 60 watt light bulb, then go feel whatever device they think is drawing so much power. they'll probably have a clue after they get their burnt hand/fingers cooled off :))
Good thoughts
GFM
@@averyalexander2303 you'll have to test it with a ammeter/dvom in series on the hot feed wire. I'd guess on them all being well under 2 watts, more realistically I'd imagine 1/2 a watt.
if it's not warm to touch, then very lower power usage. I have no GFCI's laying around close by in the house, I'm not digging in the garage (22F outside), nor will I un-wire one just to test lol. I always use low power night light bulbs as an example to people.
Thank you for the information. Makes sense..... my furnace does not run very often while my neighbors does.... houses are about the same though I use more gas with the furnace running less often compared.
Could it be the differential on your thermostat is too wide?
@@JoeLinux2000 good thinking, huge temperature swings can and does often use more energy to recover.... which is why I'm against having huge temperature setbacks programmed in. it takes time for the structure and all materials within to reacclimate, meanwhile burning extra energy for a longer period that just keeping it heated to start with.
you really have to do heat load and loss calculations for an answer if it's economical or not, most often the answer is NO and your far better off spending money on having insulation added. I'm not talking about a 3 to 4F setback, but the nutters that do 15 to 20F or full shutdowns nightly ;)
it could also be due to water heater, clothes dryer and oven, if their gas. examples, you have a hot water leak? take long showers/baths or always a bath vs. shower, factor in the number of people in the household? do laundry, wash dishes, cook very often? leave or have windows and doors open very often (them pesky kids!)
Hi there, I have a question about sun therm aquatherm units, heater blowing warm air not too familiar with these units could you help
Good video.
Question about gas mixture in extreme cold, it is minus 40 celius windchill here right now and ive noticed my flames have quite alot of orange in them and flicker quite a bit, my 95% combustion intake is vented outside, i figured maybe cause of the denser air it was creating a lean condition so i took off my burner cover and plugged the intake with a sock outside so it would only use inside air and the flames went back to mostly blue and steady but as soon as i put cover back on and removed sock flames went back to orange mix and flickering, my question is, is this normal in extreme cold to create a lean condition and will it damage my exchanger or do i have to get pressure checked when its this cold
First, wind chill is not a temp reading. Its an index. Use the actual temp. Extreme cold will create a rich condition.
I can't say I have ever seen this problem. Are you sure the vent and combustion air inlet are both clear of ice and snow?
GFM
thank you. I will keep that in mind.
I had a woman that wanted me to turn off the breaker for the lights in her crawlspace even tho it had a pull string I tried to explain it's not using electricity if it's turned off but she wasn't having it lol
I have had that too.
GFM
its 3/10/2019; I have a Rheem Criterion 2, (model# rgdg-10eamer) with a bad heat exchanger its out and I can not find a part number on it. Could you please help out. The furnace is over 20 years old. thank you.
If the heat exchanger is available, you just use the model and serial# of the furnace.
GFM
furnace ignite but take long time for gas to come out and start the flame .and the igniter wont last for long and got burned out ?
Great video
I find myself explaining frequently that a mechanical circuit breaker is not designed to be used as a switch.
ugh, does she also unplug her usb phone charger too?? as an electrician, i am never surprised at what people think electricity is. our educational system is broken. also breakers from federal pacific (stablok) and sylvania/zinsko have a 42% failure rate and most insurance companies will not insure a dwelling with either panel EVEN IF you replace all the breakers with cincinnati electric breakers which are rated for those panel and actually work. 😢
Informative video.
Flipping the breaker every night might end up ruining your entire panel. Especially if it's an old stab lok panel.
If its a stab loc, it probably be replaced anyway.
However, a failed breaker should not damage the panel unless it overheats the buss bars.
GFM
@@grayfurnaceman definitely should be replaced. Constantly flipping the breaker can make it come loose burning up the bus bar. I work for a property with 200 panels. Supposedly not able to refinance without replacing every panel. Getting bids but I dont think it will get done.
Thanks
Welcome
GFM
thanks for sharing ...
I just started watching your videos and wanted to know if you are still teaching. And do you respond to comments
I am retired from teaching and this channel is my primary job now.
GFM
Never Ever use a breaker as a switch! It wears them out and can cause a fire hazard !
In my jurisdiction, we consider 6 shutoffs or 1 dead short to be reason for replacement.
GFM
Likewise, never use a switch as a substitute for a breaker.
you are correct sir, in the industrial world I find people doing that way too often...
Yeah, its not just homeowners.
GFM
👍
Hi I have a Carrie oil heat it comes on and fire come on but no heat comes through the house
Didn’t know that.
Do you have any photographs of yourself in the field? That would be interesting to see.
I don't think I do. I will look though.
GFM
LOL looks like unabomber
thanks
Welcome
GFM
Niiiccee i understood it
are you still in the trade?
Retired
GFM
She didn't want to waste any Watt of energy...….
What do you suppose might be the reason this furnace is doing this? ua-cam.com/video/rqTWk8aD-Y8/v-deo.html
Tell a fat person that he/she just chowed down two large pizzas totaled 20K calories once a day but he/she would tell you----Yeh, but I eat only once a day and my roommate snacks all day on little peanuts...
why do transformers hum so loudly
Transformers will resonate at the frequency of the line voltage. In our case (the U.S.) it would hum at a frequency of 60hz. Some transformers are louder than others. Loudness of the hum has to with how the tranny is mounted or what it is mounted to. It can also be loud if the tranny is damaged, i.e. loose primary/secondary windings vibrating. There's not much difference between speakers and transformers.....vibrating coils of wire that emit sound.
i hum when i have a lotta Energy, too. but i stop Short of Breaking into song and dance, unless its AC DC, then ill do the Electric slide. Shocking, i know.
thats all the puns i got fer now. love you muah bye!
If a small power transformer is wired with 120v primary and 24v secondary and not using energy on the secondary is the power consumption zero?
Not quite. There will always be some inefficiencies in the windings. Its just very low.
GFM
when you generate electricity from a water wheel, how exactly does that come from heat.
Anytime electrons are moving in a wire you have friction and heat. Next time you are at your water wheel generating plant, put your hand on the generator you will see that it will be a bit warm.
He was talking about electricity in typical Electric Strip Heating applications. Clearly energy in various forms is converted back and forth to electric power anytime you are working with electricity. Energy can be in the form of heat or mechanical work (also called mechanical energy - eg kinetic energy or potential energy). Among other forms of energy are radiation, fusion, fossil fuels, chemical etc currently harnessed by man. Hydro electric is one of the most common conversions of mechanical energy to electricity where kinetic energy of water in motion is converted into three phase electricity. And then we convert part of that energy back to mechanical work in our blowers and compressors.
@@BarkerArt Similarly with wind power. The wind is produced by air pressure differences which are caused by solar heating and the heat content of the land or sea.
@@BarkerArtm You win the prize for the best answer. In the meanwhile, I'm waiting for hell to freeze over.
You were trying to explain that to a woman 😂 😆 😝
Why did you even try? 😝
When people get notions in their head that make no sense it's a waste of your time to try and inlightin them.
I will say that is commonly, but not always true.
GFM
I'm going to heat my house with 20 electric fans. {: That way I'll save a lot of money on the gas bill.
Might work well. Maybe a bit noisy though.
GFM
sounds like some people I know in summer with the AC on..... 15 fans in the house whirring on high and thinking their saving on electric..........................
I showed them the err in their thoughts, they called a month later with power bill reduced by $60+ a month, using only "3" fans to further circulate air, one of them being the HVAC blower.
Except electric is usually more expensive. Hence why they put in a gas furnace in the first place.
@@thelightninghunter23 I'm in fl so I dont see a lot of gas. Your statement is true. I realized several years ago when I noticed laundry mats use gas
Another myth along the same lines is that heatpumps are less efficient than heat strips in cold weather because they run all the time. So they turn to emergency heat below 40 when new ones can supply very usable heat at 10F. reality - heatpumps use a tiny fraction of the energy of heat strips and all the energy used by the compressor gets absorbed by the refrigerant and transferred to the house, whatever the outdoor coil picks up is free heat reducing the amount of electricity used by the heat strips. The strips only have to kick in a little, even if half the heat is supplied at a cop of 2 to 3 and the other half by the strips, there are huge savings compared to resistance heat.
Like 10 years ago on a forum I was trying to convince someone to not shut the heatpump breaker in the winter in ontario, canada. He was convinced that the 3kw or so the heatpump was using below the balance point was being wasted due to seeing the temp slip with just the heatpump running. Stat was configured to allow heatpump to fall behind, shut it off, and bring on 100% strip heat until end of cycle - which caused the original complaint about heatpumps being "useless" in colder climates. (yah, as if strip heat is better)
I couldn't get through to him.
"newer ones" that are perfectly installed, sealed and charged... now lets talk about the durability of the electronics and when they'll see that mythical "return of investment"
they 98% chance will never recover anything and not worth the rebate/tax deduction, as it all ends up on their "credit" which they pay 10x interest in the long run.
only time any of it is logical, is when it replaces ancient coal conversion furnaces that push more heat up the chimney than into the house and cost $300+ per month to operate.
too many people fall for and spread the great lies that the bean counters, shysters and marketers sling daily, enough is enough time and it's for change in that department ;)
Transformer hum is annoying as heck
Yes and grounds for replacement.
GFM
@@grayfurnaceman What if the transformer is ungrounded?
The last comment was not about grounding. Substitute "reason".
Grounding will make no difference.
GFM
@@JoeLinux2000 Well, connecting both terminals of the transformer to ground, aka a form of grounding is a sure way to get rid of that annoying hum. It only works with the low volt fuse jumped out.
I'm unsure of if having a transformer ungrounded causes it to make noise, but the form of grounding i was referring to lets out all the stored "hum" noise energy at once in the form of a loud buzz followed by a pop.
sorry i have a bad sense of humour - but the trick works, you know.
hum can often be caused by "bad electrical loads" like hair dryers, curling irons and other device on "low/medium" settings. how? most run the "reduced output" levels by using the crude method of half wave power rectification by adding a single diode in line.
example, the device on low now draws 6 amps "peak" on low, using 1 half the AC wave, which is at 60 cycles/hertz frequency. so instead of an equal load of 11 amps, it's now 6 amps load pulsed at 60 times a second, that makes many things on the same circuit or phase/leg of power feed "sing" more so the things with iron core and magnetically shielded transformers.