Gas and Oil Home Heating Furnaces - Add remote thermostat to Williams furnace

Hi,
I have an old Williams Top-vent wall furnace. I don't have the model number handy.

The valve assembly appears to be made by robert shaw and has the following:

Manual ignition (Match)
Strange looking thermocouple - it seems to run from the flame to a fatter "torpedo" shapped copper tube under the valve assembly and then into the value.
Manual temperature control. Same type of green knob as the pilot/on/off control but runs from low, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc.

I want to add a remote thermostat, but there are no terminals for doing so. Is there a common workaround for this, perhaps by replacing just the valve assembly? I'd rather not replace the entire furnace at this point as we're going to eventually add central air/heat.

Thanks for any help.

With that type of control, you are not able to do it.. Just live with it for a while till you get a new system installed.

Thanks for the quick reply Jay11j

Its going to be at least a year before we install the central heat etc, and I want to use this heater before then. We've just bought the house, and I'm a bit leery about running it all the time. I'm sure its fine (we had it checked out when we bought the house) but between the fact that its in our bedroom and that I also don't want to go out with it running (and will forget to turn it off if I have to do so manually), I'd like to put it on a thermostat/timer.

I do already have a combination CO and gas detector installed beside it.

Is it practical to replace the whole gas valve assembly - everything from above the gas tap up to the threaded output tube to the burner - including the thermocouple and pilot tube if necessary?

Thanks again
Peter

The odd looking thermocouple is thermopile. So it's not using 24 volts for power.. You could replace the gas valve, but I think it's going to cost you more than you are willing to spend..


Where are you from?

What you have is a "bulb thermostat" those numbers represent temp. Most of them 3 is about 70 degrees.. Although it may not be real accurate. Just play around with the settings. The "torpedo" you speak of is the sensing bulb. You will notice the t'couple is going to the pilot. If you want a all t'stat then the valve will need changing and the t'couple & pilot will have to be replaced with a pilot generator assembly. And of course wire and a t'stat. Now should you decide to spend alot of money to convert, please consider using a dealer. Valve will need to be adjusted to the heater rating.

Thanks for the replies Jay11j and mbk3.

I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier, but I have another similar wall furnace in our spare bedroom. This is a coleman, but it has a similar RobertShaw gas control valve assembly - however this one does have an thermostat wired to it.

Its not practical to swap rooms, but I should be able to swap the control valve assemblies - including thermopile, thermocouple (for the 2nd one) etc?

On that note - the remote thermostat does not have a battery - or any source of power. Is this what they call millivolt? Can anyone point me to a link so that I can get a better understanding of how that works?

Cheers
Peter

btw, Jay11J - I'm in Southern California.

Millivolt system is self generating. The power source is the pilot generator. It produces a dc voltage in the 250-750 millivolt range, depending upon mfg. There are millions of these systems( now thats a guess) still in existence & are quite reliable. The most comon problem is dirty pilots. When pilot is dirty the flame doesn't strike the generator properly causing low voltage. Also when thermostats are replace quite frequently wrong tstat is installed or not properly adjusted