Why would my furnace continue cycling after it reaches the desired preset temperature?
The anticipator is not your problem. It has nothing to do with what is going on. most modern thermostats don’t even have anticipators built into them anymore. Your furnace should turn on and off without you having to do anything. I’m going to assume you have a natural gas forced air furnace. If that’s not the case, feel free to email me and we’ll try to work it out. A natural gas or propane fired forced air furnace begins it’s heating cycle by energizing a small fan mounted on the face of the furnace near the burners. This fan creates an airflow through the burner assembly. A flow switch “sees” that there is air flow and tells the control board. The control board then energizes either a hot surface ignitor or a spark ignitor and opens the gas valve (there is a delay opening the gas valve to let the hot surface ignitor heat up). A flame should catch right away. Mounted near one of the burners will be a metal rod with ceramic on one end with a wire connecting to it. The rod is a flame se
i”m assuming that it is a forced hot air furnce and not a water or steam boiler. In a furnace, there is a postpurge that gets all the heat out of the exchanger after the flame is extinguished. The anticipator is located in the thermostat and is adjustable on older stats. I wouldnt try to adjust it though, they are tricky and may end up givin you more heat than you bargained for. Replace the stat with a digital one and it has a much better anticipator built in. Besides that, the furnace shouldnt cycle that often. Either it’s undersized or youve got some incredible heat loss going on.
