Hey ya'll, if anybody is having a bad day, maybe feeling like they've mad a stupid mistake, let me see if I can brighten things up for you by sharing one I made last night involving the blower motor on my forced air propane furnace. Let me give a brief background - I have a 1 story ranch, about 1,500sqft, along with 600sqft of finished basement connected to the house by a fairly large, open stairway leading to a fairly open center of the home. My 20 year old Winrich Dynasty pellet stove provides heat to the whole house pretty well from the finished section of the basement, I use a few fans to move things to the side rooms. Last week I ordered a Timber Ridge PAH from AMFM to replace the Dynasty - I wanted something I could run on a thermostat, auto ignition, big hopper, etc. Part of this upgrade was also to use my forced air propane furnace to help move the air around the house. I've been constructing a cold air return in the wall right below the ceiling in the finished room where the pellet stove is - the idea here is to use a thermostat set on cool mode to run the furnace blower to push the warm air around the house whenever it hits a warm enough temperature in the finished section of the basement where the stove is. I will run the pellet stove on a programmable thermostat upstairs to regulate temperatures as I like - pellet stove kicks up and then the furnace starts moving air once it's warm enough so it doesn't feel cold at the ducts. It'll take a little tuning but I think it'll work nice.
So, part of this plan obviously requires wiring in a second thermostat. While I was connecting this up at the furnace I decided I would change the blower speed so it would run at it's slowest speed, just gently moving warm air upstairs. I read and reread my furnace manual and some how got in my head that there were three feeds from the control board to the furnace motor - once for heat speed, one for cool speed, and one for blower speed. Since I'm installing central A/C in the spring I thought perfect, I can use the third speed, blower, for my low speed heat distribution without having to give up my high speed setting for cool. I went ahead and changed the jumper labeled blower, the white wire (I'm sure a few of your know where this is going now) over to the red. Little did I realize I had just unhooked the common/neutral wire and placed the low speed windings in it's place. I energized the system and called for fan only at the thermostat. The lights dimmed, the motor groaned, and the smoke flowed! I quickly got the power off, but the damage was done. I had essentially shorted the high speed windings in the motor to the low speed windings in the motor. I quickly realized my mistake, but the motor is toast. It will actually run, but just barely, no matter which circuit you feed. The control board seems ok, I will know for sure tonight once I install a replacement motor - boy those are expensive. So, if you've had an a bad whoops today, just know you're not the only person who made a stupid goof that cost them a bunch of time and money.
And the worst part is I'll have to wait another night or two before I get to play with my new PAH! I guess I should just be happy the old Dynasty works so good and I don't have to depend on the propane.
So, part of this plan obviously requires wiring in a second thermostat. While I was connecting this up at the furnace I decided I would change the blower speed so it would run at it's slowest speed, just gently moving warm air upstairs. I read and reread my furnace manual and some how got in my head that there were three feeds from the control board to the furnace motor - once for heat speed, one for cool speed, and one for blower speed. Since I'm installing central A/C in the spring I thought perfect, I can use the third speed, blower, for my low speed heat distribution without having to give up my high speed setting for cool. I went ahead and changed the jumper labeled blower, the white wire (I'm sure a few of your know where this is going now) over to the red. Little did I realize I had just unhooked the common/neutral wire and placed the low speed windings in it's place. I energized the system and called for fan only at the thermostat. The lights dimmed, the motor groaned, and the smoke flowed! I quickly got the power off, but the damage was done. I had essentially shorted the high speed windings in the motor to the low speed windings in the motor. I quickly realized my mistake, but the motor is toast. It will actually run, but just barely, no matter which circuit you feed. The control board seems ok, I will know for sure tonight once I install a replacement motor - boy those are expensive. So, if you've had an a bad whoops today, just know you're not the only person who made a stupid goof that cost them a bunch of time and money.
And the worst part is I'll have to wait another night or two before I get to play with my new PAH! I guess I should just be happy the old Dynasty works so good and I don't have to depend on the propane.
oy vey! 
bummer. ive had "whoopsies' in my time as well, at least you can look at it with some gallows humor i suppose.
