Central Air for Dummies

Central A/C unit

You've probably someone say, "There's no such thing as a stupid question," but we beg to differ. Around the Antisocial Network, we prefer the alternate saying, "Ask a stupid question and you'll get a stupid answer"; though we've also noticed that you can get that stupid answer by asking a smart(ish) question of the wrong person – and a lot of the wrong people have written for eHow.com over the years! People like Tom Lutzenberger, whose BA in political science failed to protect him from looking the fool when he answered the (admittedly) stupid question, "Can You Run Central Air If Your Gas Is Cut Off?" for Hunker.com.

It's a pretty dumb question to start with, but Tom didn't help matters by bowing to the overlords at Demand Media and padding what should have been a one-word answer – "Yes" – out to around 300 words. To do so, he had to show his ignorance with superfluous and half-correct factoids like

"HVAC systems incorporate a dual system design that, depending on the temperature desired, shifts between putting out heat or cool air. Having no gas flow essentially makes one-half of the system unusable (the heater)."

"Dual system design"? Perhaps: after all, plenty of HVAC systems are all-electric and we suspect that somewhere, someone is running central air with an oil furnace. We should probably point out here that lots of houses don't even have a natural gas connection. But Lutzenberger's assertion that "Having no gas flow essentially makes one-half of the system unusable..." is definitely an insult to the intelligence of the average lab rat. Of course, one simply must ask, why does it only "essentially" make the heater unusable and not "completely"? But we're just picking nits...

Tom goes on to "explain" that "Natural gas in an HVAC system kicks in when the heater side of the system begins to be used. Electrical sensors turn the system on and off. When the temperature setting falls below a certain setting, the gas flow will be turned on in the furnace generating flames, which in turn creates heat." Ooooh! he's so smart! BTW, Tom, the "setting" of what? Did you forget to mention the thermostat? or that with the vast majority of residential thermostats, the homeowner must manually switch between heating and cooling – and the homeowner, we certainly hope, knows that the gas has been shut off? Dumbass. Lutzenberger goes on to pretend he knows jack by saying, "The heater side of the system requires gas to generate the flames and subsequent hot air to blow through the system. Without the gas, the system will simply blow cold or existing air without heat."

Which, besides more or less rewording the previous paragraph, is also incorrect: a gas furnace blower fan is controlled by a limit switch, and will not run unless the interior temperature of the furnace is between the switch's set points. And then there's this sage "information:

"...when the gas does flow but the furnace in the HVAC system does not turn on... the pilot light is likely extinguished and needs to be relit."

Dumbass: the question specifically mentions that the gas has been "cut off." How's the gas going to flow in that case? For his "answer" full of half-assed, half-true assertions; an "answer" that never actually gets to the point – "Yes." – Tom Lutzenberger is once again the Antisocial Network's Dumbass of the Day.

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