British Furnaces Ain't Got Nothing on America

As many have pointed out: "ooh, Laurence, since you have a gas water heater, you don't need to turn off the electrics before turning up the dial." This has proven correct. Thank you.

Lawrence, you have a naturally aspirated gas water heater. It's not connected to your house electricity in any way. You can turn that dial with impunity, with zero risk of electric shock. Electric water heaters have the thermostats near the contacts for the elements, so it is best to shut them off before you adjust the thermostat. But even then, your breaker panel will have a dedicated breaker for your water heater in your breaker panel. It should be a 30Amp breaker, most likely a double pull (takes up two slots). You can just flip that, it will turn your water heater off, but leave everything else in your house working. This only applies if you decide to get a new house with an electric water heater, since yours is gas and not connected to electricity at all. EDIT: source: I am a professional plumber.

Just for your information there are both furnaces and boilers in the US. You have a gas furnace. Boilers typically are used in homes which still use radiators. You have to be aware to replace the disposable furnace filter periodically ( I do mine every 3 months) and replace the humidifier wick each fall. Good luck!

That thing with all the little dials on it is a gas meter, it measures how much gas your house is taking in from the gas company. You might notice that the dials move when the gas heater you have is on vs off, or any gas appliances as well. You can often find those things somewhere outside the house to, back in the days when someone would physically come and read your dial to send you the proper bill.

The furnace & boiler are two DIFFERENT machines but serve the same function. Furnaces heat (or cool if you have whole house AC) and pull the air throughout the house. Boilers heat water and pump through the radiators throughout the house.

Turn up the water heater temp. No need to turn off electricity. The other object on the floor is a gas burner for gas fireplace logs. Without the attached fire pan, it is a gas log lighter.

Lawrence, you can certainly clean out those spider webs if you want to (it is your house, after all), but consider this: they're set up where they are because insects and other creepy crawlies are moving through that area. If you get rid of the spiders, the insects will still pass through that area, but now with nothing catching and killing them, so they'll be able to move through your house at will. The spider you'd most want to worry about inside a house in most of the United States is a brown recluse, and they don't build webs. They go out roving around looking for insects instead (part of the reason they're dangerous -- most other spiders, you avoid the webs, and you're good to go) and their bite can leave nasty scars. The little dudes and dude-ettes in the webs are just happily converting all the critters that want to get into your flour and sugar and such into tasty spider snacks.

We actually have boilers here in the USA too. Our house is fitted with one. The British norm is an actual boiler, which is probably why everything eventually got called a boiler. That water cylinder in your Airing Cupboard was likely heated by a boiler which is also typical. When using a boiler, a smaller cylinder is used to provide immediate hot water as it takes a moment for the water to get hot, and a buffer tank takes the few seconds of running water out of the equation. You can sometimes see a combi boiler in the USA fitted with one. Also, I found that setting the hot water to setting B provides a good bath temp on our hot water tank. There is no power for that tank, and it lights up using a pilot light so no power is needed.

Boilers and furnaces are two different beasts. You had boilers in England to heat hot water to heat the home, I bet this older home at one point did the same. It was converted to a furnace to heat and cool the air so the home had a more even heat and was able to handle A/C

Lawrence, a simple yet important aspect of maintaining a forced-air system is to periodically replace the air filter. Doing so will ensure the equipment is running efficiently. Cheers!

About your fireplace: if it had a gas log with a gas line running to it, it might not be safe to use it as a wood burning fireplace. Our house is about the same age as yours and was advertised as having a wood burning fireplace. We used it that way for one winter, then called in chimney sweeps to clean it. They told us the chimney was not lined and the fireplace shouldn’t be used for burning wood. There is a danger of a creosote buildup inside the chimney and a chimney fire, which could burn down the house. That explained the mysterious hole in the floor next to the fireplace. It was where the gas line once ran. I ran another gas line and we now have a nice gas fireplace. Do thou the same.

In the Midwest, finding a good HVAC person is essential! Your home is a huge investment and proper maintenance is critical to protecting it. A good professional will help you understand the things you can do yourself such as filter changes and the things that only a professional should handle. The company I use is 3rd generation. Gary did the original installation 30 years ago and my last service call was by his two granddaughters. Great service all around.

Video has been out 11 hours and there are over 1000 comments, most of them incredibly giving and helpful to Lawrence on his furnace. American kindness at its best.

You can turn up your water temp without any problems with electricity. They are 2 separate systems.

That thing at around 4:30 is your gas meter. The thing at 6:25 is a small water pump. Presumably you have Air Conditioning too and the condensation from that goes into the little box and then gets pumped to a drain elsewhere. Some houses would have a floor drain near the furnace that it would just drain into and then you don't need one of those. It also looks like you might have a humidifier (at 6:31) and that also has runoff that goes into that pump.

Don't worry, you didn't confuse me with the use of the word "boiler". We also have boilers, though getting rarer these days I think. Boiler=boiling water. These transport hot water to radiators and heat homes. Furnace=hot air. These use fire to heat air directly, then transport that hot air through air ducts. My old house had a boiler and it was the best heat because it didn't affect the humidity of the house and directly heated the exterior facing walls so there were no cold spots getting through.

If you burn logs in your fireplace be sure to have the chimney inspected (especially if it’s brick and mortar) before you burn wood in it. We had a chimney fire when I was young and what had happened was the mortar deteriorated on the side against the wood frame of the house and almost started a fire. Luckily our local fire department had a special chemical “stick” they tossed into the wood burner and it not only smothered the fire in the burner but also the fire going through the mortar.

If you have radiators and baseboard heaters (water that has gets hot and goes through the system) you have a boiler. If you have heat that has is blown through air ducts you have a furnace.

For American furnaces there's one essential, easy thing to do for typical-homeowner maintenance: Get the dimensions of your filter at the air intake grate, buy enough to always have a spare and replace it when it's brown. For most people that's once a year or two, but for others it could be every few months depending on air quality, pets, the traffic in that part of the house... The filters are cheap and easy to get at places like walmart or multipurpose stores, the intake grate is usually the biggest in the house, and it takes maybe 10 minutes and a screwdriver to swap filters and dispose of the spent one.

6:44 This is to monitor the humidity of the air in your house. The meter is on your return air so it is reading the humidity of the "fresh air" entering your furnace. It appears to me that you likely have an Aprilaire humidifier on the side of your plenum (grey box with a couple hoses coming out of the bottom of it). The hose supplies water to the humidifier which sprays a mist into your heated air which helps the air to "feel" warmer (or cooler with the AC). The meter is reading what it's set to provide and what the actual level is. Obviously (maybe not...) the humidity in your house can fluctuate higher than the setting from the natural humidity in the air. It is capable of ADDING humidity to the air, but not removing it, so it will fluctuate higher than the settings, but if it goes lower, the humidifier will kick on and bump it up.