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I'm saying the filter is not the problem in this case, if the fire was caused by a faulty valve or wireing. Yes a dirty filter can cause a unit to over heat, but there are also safe guards (fuses, breakers, auto shut off sensors) that are generally in place to prevent damage to the unit because mfgers anticipate people not changing their filters that often. The OP is saying she changes hers on a regular basis, and the land lord is looking for a scape goat for his shoddy work.
That is the point of asking for an inspection. IF the landlord over rides the safety mechanism put in place by the furnace mfg. even a slightly dirty filter could cause a fire. Believe me I'm an old man and rented plenty of places. Even one that did have a furnace blow up because the landlord did not fix it. Fortunately that was after I moved.
The fact is it does not nor will it matter what caused the fire, the furnace is not safe. Being right means nothing if you are dead!
Safety comes first.
Rancher
Please allow me to clarify.
I'm so about to post pictures of my house
my house is clean, vacuumed daily, etc. sure there might be some legos on the coffee table or the occasional cereal bowl on the counter, but I've been called a "neat freak" on several occasions by friends and family. I dust often and on a regular basis, and I can always tell when we're getting close to needing a filter change by the amount of time it takes to accumulate dust. And I change the filter at the end of every month whether it needs it or not. In 5 years of living here, I have not missed a change. So, to answer the question of whether or not the cleanliness of my house caused furnace problems, the answer is a definitive NO.
On to the furnace. I'm not an hvac, but I do know a thing or two about how things work. my father brought me up to understand the machines you depend on, be it a car, a toilet, a furnace, whatever. when you take the front panel off you see the housing unit for the heat exchanger, the igniton and the wires running to various places like the fan, limit swith and motor. below the exchange you have the gas valve, and below the gas valve are the burners.
when it came time to turn on the heat this year, the blower wouldn't start. there is a regulator connected to the blower and the thermostat, most older units have on and off settings, while the newer energy efficient have on, low, high, and off. Over the summer, our power company installed a digital thermostat and an energy efficient regulator. but when the blower died, landlord concluded that the power co. didn't know what they were doing and that he needed to wire the blower back to the original setting. So at this point, either the power co.'s tech or the landlord could be the one who wired it incorrectly(but my $'s on landlord).
fast forward to moments before the fire, and the gas valve gets stuck in open position. the thermostat kicked the burners off at scheduled temperature, but the gas valve, still open allowed gas to leak out and circulate. the gas then ignited and caused a quick flash fire, which melted most of the wires around the valve as well as charring the front panel and top of the unit. by then the alarm was going of and I knew to shut the gas and the furnace off.
The technician who came confirmed my suspicion that an arc in the wiring is what ignited the gas. It was not the ignitor that lit the gas because there is a fail-safe that will not allow the ignition process to begin without the gas valve being closed.
whew!
As far as inspection goes, the energy co. wouldn't have been able to inspect the electrical elements, they check the lines to make sure they're in the proper locations, connections are airtight, and that on/off valves are functioning.
The only way it could have been prevented is if he'd not screwed with it at all.
The furnace IS safe now. it has been repaired by a certified professional
And to whoever it was who said their heart dropped after reading that my daughter was sick during all of this: my kid had the stomach flu, as did the rest of the family for several days before that. there was barely enough smoke to set off the alarm, and the CO never sounded(and yes I checked it, it was working). there were no harmful gases reaching my family.
I agree 200% with whoever said that he was simply looking for a scapegoat for his shoddy work. from all technical standpoints there is no possible way that suggest that the cleanliness of the filter had anything at all to do with the fire.
