Our furnace has been causing us grief lately. Naturally it waited for winter, and its warranty to expire, to throw a tantrum. The first episode occurred on Christmas Eve – it was so chilly in the house we worried the turkey wouldn’t thaw.
The technician arrived almost immediately, perhaps thankful the call for help came on the Eve of Christmas and not the Day. As so often happens, the furnace kicked on just as he walked through the door. To make the call worthwhile he gave it a general service and handed us our bill. He only charged time and a half for the visit. Merry Christmas.
A couple of weeks later we awoke to a chilly house again. This time the furnace coughed up a code – a clue to what the problem was. Speaking in Morse code, the flashes told us that a sensor was malfunctioning. The technician arrived, clobbered the sensor with a screwdriver ( which encouraged it to jumpstart ) and ordered a new part from his supplier. We had intermittent heat through the weekend.
The new sensor arrived and was installed lickety-split on a Monday morning, and promptly failed. Thankfully the technician was still putting the furnace back together when the failure occurred. He then began a lengthy process of elimination that included vacuuming, hammering and muttering, and determined that the capacitor was faulty. He picked up a new one of those.
Capacitors aren’t pricey, an hour and a half of vacuuming, hammering and muttering is. I wrote another cheque and wished the guy a happy new year. We had heat… for eighteen hours.
This time the technician brought a sidekick with him. Together they jimmied the door off the furnace room and hauled the fan out of the furnace. They took it back to their shop for surgery.
I put on extra socks and a sweater, plugged in the space heater and lit the fireplace. I heated the oven to 350 degrees – when the going gets tough, the tough bake cookies. By mid afternoon it was effing cold in here, even the freshly baked cookies weren’t warm anymore. I considered putting sweaters on the dogs.
The rebuilt fan arrived all sparkling clean and hopeful. It was installed with minimal clanging or banging and we had heat. The technician and his sidekick left with another cheque and a bag of cookies. We had become fast friends during the furnace adventures – the dogs had grown fond of them as well.
They had only been gone for an hour and a half before the furnace began to sound like a 747 taking off in the cul de sac every time it turned on. They didn’t knock before walking in the front door – the dogs didn’t even bark.
The fan has been balanced, calibrated and cursed. It seems to be behaving itself for the moment. I will miss my technician, and his sidekick, but I’m really hoping I won’t be seeing them again for a while. The dogs and I are snug and warm, and have a giant plate of cookies to eat – not a bad day all in all. Tasty, if expensive.
Comments (1)
Too funny (but expensive I’m sure)!