On 5 Oct, 14:37, "-zero" wrote:
"DerbyDad03" wrote in message

oups.com...

On 5 Oct, 12:05, kjpro @ usenet.com wrote:
"DerbyDad03" wrote in message

- It may be the heaviest, but it's not like its a 1/4 inch thick

Dunno...it was a 1950-ish Perfection gas fired forced air. From
exterior of the heat exchanger, it certainly appeared and felt, like
the unit was pretty thick.

...

In an earlier post, someone said (about the 20 YO Carrier) "The burner
tubes are inside the heat exchanger". On my perfection, the burner was
below the heat exchanger in it's own compartment. The burner was, I
don't know, about a 9" x 9" plate with over a hundred (?) flames.

Sounds like a manufacturers conversion from oil to gas.

The heat exchanger pictured towards the bottom of this site looks like
an absolute wimp compared to the rough surfaced, solid looking heat
exchanger in my old furnace.

Sounds Like an oil to gas conversion. Midco burners did quite well
through to 60's-70's. :-)

In the early 60's, there were quite a few companies that designed
their own conversion burner (or fuel burner of choice) as they
we're sitting on a cargo loads of oil furnace chambers that were not
moving anytime soon. As Natural-Gas lines were being run like
mad through the big cities, Gas furnace design was changing
from gravity units w/ add-on blowers, to the
typical 80%'ers of the 1960's-80's.

Mind you, back then there were 1,000 times (WAG) the number of
furnace and boiler manufacturers in the US. Many were very
popular/well known but only encompassing a very small
region of the country.

Some of these are still running today, due to the lack of
the Planned-Obsolescence concept, and the focus was
mostly "Ours is better/stronger/faster than yours".

-zero

If it was a conversion, it was certainly done by the manufacturer, as
you stated. The manual included instructions for the installed gas
valve and side mounted blower.

The original gas valve had a flip-up tab so you could manually operate
the gas valve during a power outage. The manual listed the duty cycle
for operating the unit without a blower. I doubt the comparatively
wimpy heat exchangers of today's furnaces could handle running without
a blower.

Wouldn't you know that early one winter the gas valve started acting
up, so I placed a service a call. They had to replace the gas valve,
and "No, you can't have one that can be operated manually. They're
illegal now." So what happens during March of same winter? A major
ice storm in upstate NY. We were without power - and now without heat
due to the "upgraded" gas valve - for 5 days.