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Jon Elson

wrote:

Last week we were without power an hour and a half during a very mild snow
storm. Luckily it was 9-10:30 am and 34F. But what if it was longer, at
night
and colder? The system is York Borg Warned from 1965. Anyone know if
there is a way to manually turn the heat on?

Can't say about your system. We have hydronic heat here (water-filled
baseboard radiators, a circulating pump, zone valves and 24 V AC gas valve.
The zone valves have a manual override catch that will lock them open. I
guess that was provided in case there was hope of convection, but I doubt it
would work on our system.

Some gas valves have a manual override to turn the gas on, but you'd need to
be VERY careful to not overheat the heat exchanger without the line-powered
fan or circulator.

What we did was disconnect the furnace from the hard-wired power and connect
to a generator. It is apparently illegal to have a furnace fed from a plug,
so we have to unwire and then rewire every power failure.

A gas-fired furnace doesn't draw very much electrical power.

Jon