Furnace Ignitor Buying Tips

If you’re a furnace owner and you use this for your heating system or for your air conditioning, it’s not going to take long for you to realize if it’s working or not. If your furnace is burning propane gas as opposed to natural gas, check with the propane first if you have any problems in that department. If your propane is still okay, then your problem is probably with the furnace ignitor.

You don’t need to hire professional furnace repair companies to replace something as simple as the ignitor. In fact, this is easy enough to do yourself. Here are some helpful tips for you if you are planning to buy and replace your furnace ignitor yourself.

1. Know what kind of furnace you are using. There are three main kinds: the conventional warm air furnace, the induced draft air furnace and the condensing furnace. When you know what kind of furnace you are using, then you will know what kind furnace ignitor will be used on the inside. This will also point you to the right direction as to how to replace your ignitor.

2. Know what kind of ignitor your furnace uses. The two different ways are the intermittent pilot and the hot surface ignition. The intermittent pilot surface ignitor uses an electrical spark that is controlled electronically, which then ignites the gas pilot and then heats the main burners to be able to provide the heat to the thermostat. The hot surface ignition uses an electronically controlled resistance heating element, which acts kind of like a light bulb filament. This is the most commonly used ignitor today and should last you an average of 3-5 years.

3. Do not call a professional furnace company for the new parts. Usually, these companies buy these products on wholesale for a lot cheaper than they’re selling it. You can make use of the yellow pages to find a place in your area that sells things like a furnace ignitor. This way, the ridiculous inflation prices of a lot of these furnace repair companies will not rip you off.

4. When buying, it is probably a good idea to bring the part with you when you go to the store so that you are sure that you are buying the right part. To be even surer, remember all the info that you got about your furnace and mention this to the salespeople. They should be trained well enough to be able to tell you what kind of furnace ignitor you will need with the kind of furnace that you have. In any case, these stores always have charts that have the model numbers listed down, so that you are sure that you are not getting the wrong product.

5. If the plug-in of the new ignitor is not the same as the old one, you might have to merge the wires and of the old with the new. Just strip off the protective coating of both ends, approximately 2 inches from the end of the wire. Twist the wires together and attach some wire caps to make sure that they are held together tightly.

6. Remember not to hold your furnace ignitor anywhere but the ceramic holder. Doing so may cause the ignitor not to work anymore because the brass wires have been contaminated by oils from your hands.

There you have it. These are some tips that will help you in buying a new ignitor for your furnace. This is going to be helpful in saving you a lot of money, because you won’t have to hire a professional company ever again. Replacing the ignitor is so simple, it’s almost just plug and play. Remember everything you need when buying your ignitor, so that you don’t end up buying the wrong kind.

Emerson shares how he replaced the furnace ignitor in his unit