furnace interference

[Bigstuff95]

I have an Antron 99 Base antenna hooked up to a General Lee mobile on a pyramid power supply 10 amp 12 amp surge protector with not sure how much coax, but is hooked up to a ground cable outside but when ever my furance turns on, I get noise in my Cb. base? ''now I think I need a better grounding, my ground rod hamered in the ground is not also connected to my main house ground, so that is my next plan, now I can find both 3/4'' Tinned Copper Flat Braid, or 3/4'' Bare Copper Flat Braid, now witch is the best to use? and it says some are 3/4'' and some are 1/2''?, and some are flat and some are Tubular? I've never messed with grounding straps before so I don't know? and I have only used a noise filter on my moble to reduce motor noise, not ever had a problem with the Base getting the furnace noise when it come;s on?

 

[kruser]

I'd try and cure the noise at the source before anything.
That may not be the easiest but it's worth looking into if you are handy with HVAC.

 

[WA0CBW]

I would avoid any non-insulated "braid" in an RF environment. As the braid ages and corodes it can cause Radio frequency interference.
bb

 

[spongella]

Sometimes you cannot completely remove the interference but you can take steps to minimize it. Here my pellet stove causes loud buzzing sound on the AM and longwave band. What I did was wrap an extension cord around two large toroid cores and connected that to the stove's plug. It lessened the noise to a tolerable level. Palomar has a great site for RFI and ways to reduce it. I used their recommendations but found you have to experiment a bit as it is not an exact science. RFI/EMI Solutions - Palomar Engineers®

 

[Thunderknight]

I'm guessing it's a newer high efficiency furnace? They use variable DC motors for the blowers. I had a big problem with the furnace at a previous house...The manufacturer made an RFI reduction kit that basically added filtering to the motor wiring...helped but did not fully eliminate it. So I often just turned the heat down when I was operating HF
If it's received over the air, adding any filtering to your radio's power supply won't help. The only solutions are basically to reduce or eliminate the noise at the source (the furnace) or to move the antenna further from the noise source.

 

[kruser]

I'm guessing it's a newer high efficiency furnace? They use variable DC motors for the blowers. I had a big problem with the furnace at a previous house...The manufacturer made an RFI reduction kit that basically added filtering to the motor wiring...helped but did not fully eliminate it. So I often just turned the heat down when I was operating HF
If it's received over the air, adding any filtering to your radio's power supply won't help. The only solutions are basically to reduce or eliminate the noise at the source (the furnace) or to move the antenna further from the noise source.

I've also had a newer gas furnace that used an HV spark generator to ignite the pilot. Normally, the pilot flame is detected which shuts down the HV but in my case, the HV to the pilot kept running. It turned out being a faulty control board.
Some newer models use a hot surface igniter instead of a spark which is basically a heated filament to ignite the gas flowing over it. Those types don't usually generate any noise.
You are very correct about the variable frequency drive controllers used today. They can be horrible for noise and hard to cure.

For heat, just get yourself an old Heathkit SB220 amp and let the tubes keep you warm when you have your furnace turned down

 

[Bigstuff95]

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I'm guessing it's a newer high efficiency furnace? They use variable DC motors for the blowers. I had a big problem with the furnace at a previous house...The manufacturer made an RFI reduction kit that basically added filtering to the motor wiring...helped but did not fully eliminate it. So I often just turned the heat down when I was operating HF
If it's received over the air, adding any filtering to your radio's power supply won't help. The only solutions are basically to reduce or eliminate the noise at the source (the furnace) or to move the antenna further from the noise source.

well its a heat pump its a modular home I had put here in 2001 the furnace is a Carrier date home was built unknown?, now I squelch out the noise to not hear it but then real far away people are squelched out, and at time's mainlly at late night I like to see what I can hear far away with is why I was trying to figure out how to control the furnace noise? I thought it was my ground that needed to be better? but maybe that would not matter in this situation?

 

[a417]

i would go after finding the source of the noise, as several have mentioned different potential sources already. HV sparks, crappy motors, etc all can have different solutions... so I'd start poking around. If you can find the biggest smoking gun, you might be able to solve the problem outright.

 

[spongella]

a417 is right on the money, find the source(s) then proceed from there. Try turning the suspected sources off one at a time while the radio is on. One source I found was dimmer switches which cause a loud buzzing when not in the full bulb brightness position.

And yes, generally I find noises are more prevalent at night too. Could be the street lighting.

 

[StaticDischarge]

A portable AM radio with a comprised antenna (or no antenna) , not tuned to any stations may be a decent tool to help locate the noise.