After a pretty good Thanksgiving, and an absolutely fabulous Black Friday, I was looking forward to a quiet Saturday. Just a few errands to run, check in on my classes, do some laundry, etc.
While doing the check in with my classes this morning, Sarah kept complaining she was cold. After a 1/2 hour of complaining and trying to walk her through adjusting the thermostat, I noticed I was getting cold. So I go downstairs to check on the thermostat and notice the house temp is a chilly 63 degrees. I play with the thermostat. I can’t get the furnace to kick in.
I go to the basement, no noise from the furnace. So I call John, who is at his church job, practicing. He has me change the fuse. Still nothing. I flip the power to the furnace. Nothing. So, I call the furnace company and have a service call put in — on the 6 year old furnace. Yell to the kids to put on warmer clothes and find the dogs sweaters, etc. I give the furnace a swift kick, and head back to the main floor.
By the time I get back to the main floor, I notice the furnace has started and is emitting a strange odor. I turn it off at the thermostat, and go back downstairs. I have Rachel start it again from the thermostat, and the furnace makes some gawd-awful noises for five minutes, and then it starts. The furnace starts a cycle of short on periods, and long off periods. After two hours, the temp has risen all of 2 degrees in the house.
Furnace guy shows up, checks the thermostat (OK), then goes to the basement. Touches a few things on the furnace and diagnoses the problem: the furnace filters are clogged. So we move some stuff around so he can get into where the filters are, and as soon as he removes the filter, the furnace goes quiet — but is running.
The filter is CAKED with gray fuzz and stuff. Rachel and I concurred that we could make a very large dust bunny, and have enough left over to make a couple dust Scotties. The furnace guy really cleaned it out well, using our ShopVac, and happened to have some new, clean filters in his truck. I watch him very carefully, ask a bunch of questions, planning to get my money’s worth out of this very simple service call. He was great, straight-forward, and didn’t make me feel like an idiot. I now know how to do the monthly filter cleaning.
15 minutes later, all is replaced, cleaned, and running happily. The furnace guy leaves with $300 of our emergency fund. Thank God for emergency funds.
Two hours later, John returns home, and I inform him of the diagnosis and the bill. He says he cleaned it two months ago, but I really wonder … the filter was caked with dust and stuff.
It’s clean now, and I know what to do. It was a spendy lesson, but I guess that’s what I really needed to do today. Oh, and I apologized to the furnace for kicking it. I hope it was accepted.
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