Frozen Forced Air Furnace?

Hi,

Can a Forced Air Furnace be damaged by freezing conditions? I'm considering a place where the furnace was exposed to freezing and I am wondering what could be damaged with it.

Thanks for any replies

Unless it has a humidifer in it, probably not.

If it is high efficiency with condensate discharge, you may need to heat tape the discharge.

PEW said:

If it is high efficiency with condensate discharge, you may need to heat tape the discharge.

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Or you might have to replace a tray or tube if it's let to freeze with water in the tray or tube. That would be a relatively cheep repair.

Bill Arden said:

Or you might have to replace a tray or tube if it's let to freeze with water in the tray or tube. That would be a relatively cheep repair.

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Unless the unit is in the attic and the pipe breaks away from the tray...... Been there done that.

My condensing boiler has a trap in it, so if it held water, you'd probably break it. A conventional furnace would not normally have any water in it by design...not saying if you left it in the rain and then it froze you wouldn't have problems (maybe more from the rain in the controls!), but normally, except for the water vapor from the combustion process that normally goes out the flue, there should not be any water in there, and the controls normally wouldn't have a problem, or they'd never be able to ship them anywhere in the winter...few train cars or tractor trailers are heated.

Boilers, on the other hand, unless purged (blown dry) would likely have problems, depending on the quantity and where water was in them when it froze.