1985 General Electric Furnace New in Box

[repairguy]

A customer gave me a GE furnace and evaporator coil that he told me he bought at a garage sale years ago with the intent to one day install in his house. These units originally came from a dealer who I knew for 18 years before his death in 2018 and the hvac system in my home was purchased from him over 15 years ago. If he was still alive he would’ve found this to be neat and probably could’ve told me the whole story as he was a great man who was really into the hvac business and ran his own business since the seventies. The box had a written delivery date on it of 7-30-85. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them yet but if I don’t find a use I will just display them with the washer/dryer collection. The evaporator is a heavy built aluminum coil that is uncased but also has a cabinet kit that came with it.

 

[repairguy]

More pictures:

 

[repairguy]

Some labels from the furnace and pictures of the evaporator and case:

 

[corvairgeek]

No over priced controller to fail every 3-5 years

The pilot light might use $10 worth of gas in the life of the furnace.

 

[circlew]

I see that GE had already sold their HVAC division to Trane by that time. GE was a popular brand of equipment in the Cincinnati area. I remember going to a lot of Homearama houses in the 70's that had GE Weathertron heat pumps.

 

[combo52]

GE hot air gas furnace

Neat find Melvin maybe you could use this to heat your new appliance museum.

This really brings back memories my first partner bought a condo in Northwest Washington in 1980. It had this exact furnace even the same size and it never had any problem with it or the air conditioner in the 20 years. We kept that place.

I did in the first year convert it to electronic ignition, because even back, then the pilot light burns about six dollars worth of gas a month

It was easy to get conversion kits in those days to convert these two electronic ignition. I did that for a lot of friends, my older brother even did several of the overhead heaters in the warehouse etc. to get rid of the gas wasting pilot lights that caused the heat exchangers to rust out.

John

 

[sudsmaster]

 

 

This house has a similar forced air gas furnace. It's probably about 10 years newer than the one pictured in this thread, since I was told it was replaced a few years before I bought this house in 1997. 

 

I don't remember what brand it is, and don't particularly want to crawl under the house to find it. Although sooner or later I might have to do that when it finally fails. And then by law it might have to be replaced with an electric furnace. Ew.

 

 

[norgeway]

I wish

That was in my house instead of this computer laden noisemaker we have

 

[Chetlaham]

I feel you Norgeway!

The memories this brings of my old 1980s era Furnace. How I wish this type of furnace was still made new and still dominant.

 

 

My Heil high efficiency condensing furnace is nothing but trouble. Inducer, pressure switch, hot surface, flame sensor and control board have all needed replacement. There is also this thing that when the weather gets warmer the pressure switch will cycle instead of hold on draft, nothing seems to correct it, except taking the cover off the furnace... goes back to normal... put the cover back on after 24 hours its doing it again. I think it has something to do with the seals expanding, but what do I know. There was also this thing where the blower would cycle on and off and the control board would blink "flame sensed out of sequence" error code. Nothing, and I mean nothing would correct it. Running a new flame sense wire helped, but it would still act up over time. I busted up my kitchen wall thinking new thermostat wire would fix it. Nope. Fortunately, and for reasons still not explainable the issue just went away one its own 2 years ago. 

 

Simply put the sensitive level of logic required to control an overly complicated HE furnace just isn't doable. Outside of specific information technology equipment electronics don't belong in HVAC, white goods or building control systems.