Welding the heat exchanger has no effect on the safety of the unit. It will likely continue to crack unless you find a way to stress relieve it, but it buys some time until he can get $ to buy a new one
Still looking? PM me if you want.
My uncle owns his own heating + cooling business. 28 years experience.
He’s not the cheapest, but he’s the only employee so you know a real pro is doing it, not some company that hires guys with 1-2 years experience. Ya get what you pay for.
His work is A+++.
Yeah judging how your turbo cavalier projects went I think you should bite the bullet and pay a professional before you burn your house down
I have a welder, vice grips and duct tape… What else could I possibly need?
As for my car, buying commercial parts from a reputable source would have prevented all of my turbo problems. No cracked manifold, and I probably even would have received the charger that was advertised 
Thats what happens when nobody made turbo kits for j-bodies, and I was not handy enough to DIY it.
I’m looking to upgrade my 9 year old 80% efficient furnace in the next month or so… (to a 95+ with some other toys).
so I might have a great condition used one up for grabs for almost nothing.
Dibs then 
I’m getting a quote this coming Wednesday… My house is 1650sq/ft if you’re wondering about size compatibility.
I’ll give you dibs and keep you in the loop.
Well then, I hope you were undersized…
My current is 90,000 btu or something for 1500 sq’
I was figuring I could waste less by heating the basement…:shrug:
here is the sticker on the inside… it was hard to get a good shot.
It’s a York.
That looks like a better fit than mine.
The BTU rating are on input - you have to multiply it times efficiency to get the actual BTU.
Did you attempt to do a heat loss calc ?
furnace i just got done installing its a 75,000 btu btw
60,000 btu # was what was thrown out by a noco “audit” last year, and also by the reimer guy that tried to sell the wife a new one.
Sounds about right for the size, unless the house is particularly leaky/old
You don’t really get into 75000 btu output (like 90 at 80% AFUE) units until about 2000 sq ft.
this website has a calulator for BTU size based on the sq.ft. of the house, and the region.
I just ordered my new carrier 95% variable speed fan furnace… should be here in about 10 days.
isnt your house fairly new aaron?
i just partially installed my used armstrong ultra 80 oil furnace this weekend. the thing is mint and it was only 150$ 
gave it a good cleaning, carried it down in the basement with a friend and hooked up the supply plenum. the old furnace supply flange was a different shape so i had to make a transition piece. i vacuumed out as much return ducting as possible and set the return plenum in place to reattach when i get a chance.
when i pulled the old furnace… the heat exchanger was stamped “1960”… 49 years old. still ran well, it just started to smell some upon startup. i may weld it up and keep it for a garage heater.
few more connections and ill be ready for winter. well that is after i have the local oil place stop in with the Bacharach test equipment to set it up properly to account for the differences in chimneys from the old house to this one. i am pretty good at eyeballing it but setting it up properly cant hurt. especially since its already clean.
i think once its set up and working well for a little while, (sometimes they need a readjustment depending on air quality/temp) im going to hook my wideband up to it and an EGT gauge to see what it is reading so that i can recreate the operating conditions without the fancy Bacharach stuff. its all air/fuel ration and temps… it shouldnt be to hard. ill mark the position of the air inlet band and adjust it and see how much the a/f changes.
im sure some will say “dude, why didnt you go gas???”. no gas up my road, already have a near full tank of oil, got a free tank last winter and i dont want to do propane.
Brian
I just had Central Heat come out here, and inspect the two furnaces in my duplex. The upper where tenants live is in good shape, they cleaned it out.
The lower where I live has a Ruud unit from 1981. The guy showed me a crack in the heat exchanger, and suggested that I replace it. He shut the gas off to the unit.
I’m shopping for a new unit. They wanted $2200 installed for a 80/20 90k btu unit. They just based that size on what the old one was.
The entire house is about 2100sq feet, two separate apartments and furnaces… The lower apartment is 1050sq feet, with new windows and modest insulation.
Does 90k input BTU unit (72k output) sound right for such a little apartment?
I’d like to downsize if possible, and I want to stick with a 80/20 unit…
The calculator says that I need 39k effective output BTU’s, which would mean that a 90k unit is nearly twice as much furnace as I need.
Can anyone shed any light?
I have a buddy out on Rochester who is in HVAC, but he hasn’t returned my call yet…
i used to work for Tri R mechanical services (hvac) i would be called in once a month to bj’s store to weld cracks in the huge heat exchanger they have. its not a big deal at all, this route might be quicker and cheaper.