We have an unusual furnace. It’s a KoolFire™, and was designed for use in the Canadian North. It’s located outside the house, and operates as a heat pump on cool days, with a natural gas burner kicking in when it gets colder (and works in reverse as an air conditioner in summer). Normally, it works great, EXCEPT that due to an installation error (before we bought the house), the water runoff from the gas burner sometimes freezes up and plugs the drain line, so that ice collects inside and eventually freezes up some vital component. (Frequent -20° weather doesn’t help any).
The first time we had a problem, I called the furnace service phone number stuck on the side of the furnace and Mike showed up. He fixed the problem, got our heat back, explained the cause, and recommended a couple of things I could do to help reduce future problems. We called Mike up once or twice a year for emergency service for several years, and he was always cheerful and quickly got our heat back on. One call had him working at 3:00 AM on a Sunday, in a blizzard, with the temperature less than -20° and much colder with the wind chill, on his knees in the snow chipping ice out of the bottom of the furnace, and cracking jokes with me!
A couple of years ago, I came home from work one day and my wife told me that Mike had dropped by and spent a while working on the furnace. I went to look, and he had partly fixed the original installation error by cutting away part of the concrete pad to let the run-off drain directly into the ground. No charge, he was just in the neighbourhood, figured he’d have a look at it and saw a possible solution.
Today, it’s -27° and I have a look at the furnace (I’m a bit paranoid about it, even though it’s been mostly OK since his fix) and find there’s a lot of ice building up by the drain, so I chopped the ice away, dumped some salt under the drain, and then decided to call the service number and have it checked out. Ten minutes later, I get the callback from Mike and explain the problem but tell him it isn’t an emergency and can wait until tomorrow (when it’s forcast to be only -3°). No problem, he says, I’m in the neighbourhood and I’ll come by. Literally 2 minutes later he pulled into my driveway. He opened up the furnace, found no ice inside, checked and adjusted the drain heater cable, and left to continue his Christmas shopping. Here and gone in 5 minutes. No charge.