We have a ventless natural gas heater in our basement that keeps the house at 70 degrees if the furnace fails. We keep it fired up all winter long because our basement is finished (the man cave) and the furnace doesn’t run as much.
Thanks! I just talked to the warranty company and I should have an update early tomorrow.
It’s going below freezing tonight but it’s warming ip the rest of the week.
Glad you got through last night. I wish you luck tonight. Those ‘magic bags’ can be homemade. A new sock, white rice and a good stout rubber band. Heat in the micro and put them in the bed with you.
Thanks!
Ya know…based on the very, very little you said in the OP, I’d guess it’s the inducer motor. With the furnace make/model you can probably find it’s replacement and either get one from an HVAC/Electrical supply house (if you have one that’s open to the public and/or know someone with an account) or get it on Amazon and have it tomorrow. They’re very easy to replace and not all the difficult to troubleshoot. They’re also not all that expensive. $100 maybe.
I’m not saying that you have to do that, just putting it out there as an option. Of course, if you’re doing fine, then let the HVAC company take care of it. However, I’d keep on them [the warranty company]. Don’t wait for them to call…call them back tomorrow and say something along the lines of ‘I just wanted to make sure that my furnace is going to be fixed today, the temps are below freezing here’. Perhaps even push them to send another company out if this one sounds like it’s going to be a while. Keep in mind, tomorrow is Thursday, you’re getting awfully close to another long weekend and being not having a furnace until at least next Wednesday.
I feel your pain
We have a boiler heating system. Last fall at the beginning of the cold season, it stopped working. Took a few months to get fixed because we had to get government assistance to pay for it. Cold few months. Not sure really why it took that long but it was cold. We got by. Be sure to keep those pipes from freezing.
Hope things get warm for you soon!
The perfect time for a house warming party.
No need to RSVP, just bring wood. No fireplace? Well, the fun is in huddling together.
Contractor says he’s coming in the morning!
I would die. Actually, I think I’d just stay in the living room where there is a fireplace and close off the rest of the house. Does your furnace heat your water as well? Mine heats my shower water as well as my radiators… I could make it temporarily with no radiators, but I don’t know how I’d deal with no hot water.
There was an article in the Times last week about a public housing apt. building where there has been no central heating for 10 years. A private landlord would have been strung up by now, but the landlord was NYC. What they saved in rent, they spent much more for space heating.
Anyway, hope everything works out for you. When we had no electricity and thus no heat or hot water during the ice storm nearly 22 years ago, I was lucky to have a former student of mine living in a place that did have power (with random outages not lasting more than an hour or two) who could put us (and a half dozen others) until our power was restored, exactly a week after it failed. Fortunately, the temperature hovered around freezing most of the time (which is why the freezing rain kept on coming).
Yes, it’s the inducer motor. The problem is that parts are apparently hard to get for my old furnace.
Repairman was just here. He couldn’t fix it. He is going to go back to the shop to look for a part he can jigger together. If that doesn’t work my whole furnace will need to go. It would be nice to have a new furnace under warranty but better at a more convenient time
It’s uncanny how major appliances, etc, seem to know the wrong time to die. We had to panic-buy a fridge when ours gave up the ghost. Luckily, we knew our HVAC was old and inefficient, so we replaced it 12 years ago at our convenience. Unfortunately, I’ve been told their average life is 10-15 years. Ours has been serviced annually and so far, so good. But I’m betting it’ll die during a blizzard, or the a/c will quit during a record heat wave, because that’s how life goes sometimes…
Hope yours can be cobbled together for a little longer!
FWIW, the AC is much more likely to go out during a heat wave than the furnace dying in the cold. The furnace (assuming it’s gas) only has to work longer when it’s colder while the AC works considerably harder in the heat.
And, naturally, either could break in the off season, you just wouldn’t know it happened. That’s the excuse I use to fire up the furnace the first time it’s even a little cold out. I’d rather find out the furnace doesn’t work when it’s 60 out than a month later when it’s 10.
That’s why we have ours serviced before each season of use - the pros check and adjust and clean and whatever else they do. Our a/c did crash last summer - blown capacitor(s) which were quick and easy and not at all cheap to have replaced. But we were cool again, so there’s that.
Furnace fixed just in time for New Year’s!
Yay! Congrats!
Just saw this thread - and this in particular reminded me of my first year in the DC area.
We sublet an efficiency apartment near Dupont Circle. We were on the third floor. Ground floor was an elderly woman who had worked for the owner for many years and I think got cheap rent as a benefit of being pensioned off. Second floor was a man slightly older than we were. Each floor had one apartment empty as well.
The landlord decided he was going to upgrade the building’s electric and furnace (the electricity was so outdated we had to be shown where the fuse box was). And he decided to do it on the cheap - i.e. without permits.
So he yanked out the furnace, which was in the basement. This was October.
Then the city shut the process down because NO PERMITS.
He had to run in an extra electrical feed to feed space heaters in each apartment because of the bad wiring. Those worked… not quite well enough, and we were on the third floor (i.e. got what little heat rose from the other two).
The poor woman on the ground floor had an unheated basement below her, which was not well sealed, and it was a cold winter. She was running her oven to try to keep the place habitable :eek: I suggested she fill the bathtub with hot water instead (which helped… when there was hot water…).
For us to keep warm, basically we stayed in bed the whole time when we were home. Now, some might consider this a feature 
but the charm actually did wear off.
We were young - not yet 30 - so for us it was an adventure. We were also subletting (with permission), so we didn’t want to make waves. The poor lady downstairs was probably not well educated and I’m sure didn’t feel in a position to make waves. The fellow on the 2nd floor filed complaints - which of course did nothing constructive while we were there; may have helped the regular tenant when he returned from his well-timed winter in Florida!!
You passed the baton to me!
We had a crazy wind storm on NYE and the power blipped ever so slightly in my house. I mean, slightly enough that the lights blinked and the TV went off but none of the appliances lost power and the computer hooked up to the TV continued to work and play Netflix while the TV rebooted.
I guess the blip blipped out my furnace. It was unusually warm, like in the high 50s (hence the wind) so I didn’t even notice the furnace not coming on, until I woke up on New Year’s Day to 61 degrees inside. A couple pokes and prods of the furnace and I declared it dead. It being New Year’s Day there was no way I was calling The Man to come make a fix so I toughed it out until this evening, the first appointment I could get.
Last night was ok. I put on a space heater in my bedroom and closed the door and it kept the heat quite well (I’ve also got 2 dogs who sleep with me).
Today was pretty shitty, though. I woke up with a stuffy nose and sitting in a 52 degree house all day made my sinuses feel much worse. I didn’t go out all day, but I should have, but I didn’t feel well.
They didn’t make it to my house until 5. The guy replaced the pressure switch and was gone by 6.
Interestingly enough, as soon as the furnace came back on my nose started clearing up. There’s something to be said for the whole-house humidifier and electronic filter!
If anyone would like to take the baton for “Keep your fingers crossed for me: President’s Day without a furnace” let me know!
Congrats!! Was it a cobble up fix or a genuine fix