Woke up today, and it was cold in the house. Not just cool, but downright cold. I checked the thermostat, and the temp inside the house was 11C (52F). Not comfortable at the best of times, but especially now that we’re suffering through a cold snap, with temps below -25C (-13F) and colder outside.
I called a repair place, and they sent a technician out. The news was not good. The furnace had reached the end of its life. The technician could tell the age from looking at it, or maybe he did a serial number search, but either way, it turns out that my furnace has performed well past its predicted life span.
He could repair it for now, but wouldn’t guarantee for how long the repair would last. He could do a better, and more expensive, repair, but that would involve ordering in parts that wouldn’t arrive until next week. Or, there was yet another repair that could be done, “But at that point, you might as well look at a new furnace, because that repair cost would put you in that cost ballpark.”
Well, in the end, a new furnace really is called for. So I opted for that. Ten-year warranty, and the techs will make an annual checkup call for three years. Delivery and installation should occur on Monday. He did enough repairs on what I have now to keep it going for a few days, and showed me how to “reset” the system if it went kerfloo again. Plus, there’s a 24-hour number to call if things go really wrong, and they’ll show up with heaters to get me through.
Phew! Not what I needed today. So, how was your Thursday?
Good luck with that. Nice that they can get you through the weekend so labor won’t be as bad. I had to replace my furnace and a/c last year. Expensive but worth it in the peace of mind it gives you.
I live in an apartment with a wall heater. As far as I can determine it was installed sometime in the 1950s. On Tuesday it stopped working. A repair person is supposed to come tomorrow at noon to check it out and determine if it needs to be replaced. My landlords are not happy.
Fortunately I live in San Francisco, so it’s still a balmy 17 C / 61 F in here. But I’m hoping this gets resolved quickly, and maybe with something a little more modern.
Man, I hate when that happens, and it always seems to happen on the coldest week of the year. We’re on our third furnace now, essentially; the first one started breaking down the first winter we lived in the house and we replaced it piece by piece over the next five years. That second, Frankenstein monster, one wasn’t getting up to the right temperature when the tech came out to start it up and shut down the cooler this fall. We had learned our lesson twenty years ago and were fortunate enough to have the money to replace it entirely, so we now have a brand-new shiny unit.
Xmas of 2022 our very old furnace died. Our heating guy had kept it going for the past 5 years, so it wasn’t a surprise. He’s a friend and managed to install our new furnace over the holiday.
It’s a great furnace, extremely more efficient than the old one, which kinda sucks. The old one inadvertently warmed the basement (which includes my man cave). Our new efficient furnace loses no heat to its surroundings, so the basement is chilly.
It will be three years next month when our 50 year old furnace died. Only a few more payments until the new one is paid off. It is way more efficient, but I don’t think it will save enough to pay for itself before it dies.
At least you could keep yours going until you get a new one, we only had space heaters for a few days.
I installed my Goodman furnace in 1996.Last month I had the first failed part, the inducer blower pressure switch. That was on a Friday evening but I picked up a replacement on Saturday. Since then I have ordered and have in stock every part that can fail suddenly and be easily replaced Most are $20 or so. Parts on eBay and Amazon are half the price of local pickup.
Inducer blower pressure switch
hot surface igniter
flame sensor
main blower run capacitor
main circuit board
inducer blower
main blower motor (already had this one).
We had that happen to us ten years ago; we discovered the old furnace (which was about 20 years old) was dead when we got home late one Saturday evening, on one of the first really chilly nights of the fall, in October.
Repair guy came out on Sunday, said “it’s dead,” but we weren’t able to get the new one installed until Tuesday night, as the village where we live requires building permits for just about everything (including HVAC installation). Thankfully, it wasn’t too cold for those two days.
We had a furnace die on us a few years ago, due to a crack in the heat exchanger that was leaking carbon dioxide. Not good. Like the OP, it happened during a cold snap, and they couldn’t get a replacement furnace installed for three days (it happened on a Friday afternoon.) I stopped by their shop where they loaned me four big electric space heaters. I was impressed that they had them available for customers to use.
That’s what the technician said. My heat exchangers are shot, and they were the parts that would have to be ordered for the “more expensive than basic repair.” Naturally, the minute I heard “carbon monoxide,” I was like, “Okay, we’re not fooling around here, this is serious.”
Like I said, he did shim a solution to get me through the next few days, and everything should be safe, including any danger from carbon monoxide. But if I start feeling inexplicably sleepy at a time of day when I wouldn’t normally—well, I’m getting the hell out, never mind the cold, and calling somebody.
Good to hear that the furnace is working again for now, and a new one is on the way! Sounds like things are well under control. Naturally, of course, the furnace would choose to fail during a deep freeze of the kind found only in the Canadian west and on the polar regions of Mars!
For years now I’ve been living in fear of the same thing happening to me, because my furnace has a problem with the exhaust fan. It’s one of those furnaces with no chimney, in which the combustion gases are blown out through a PVC pipe by a blower fan. Which has been making odd noises for years now. I always anticipate a failure sometime around Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve, but so far it’s still hanging in there!
In all seriousness, it doesn’t work that way, at least, not reliably. You really should get yourself CO detectors pronto if you don’t already have them, but you probably do as they’re generally part of modern smoke detectors. You can also get separate CO detectors, including the kind that plug into a wall outlet. I have one of those in the basement near the furnace, as well as ceiling-mounted smoke+CO combos.
Yes, some good advice there, and I plan to get some CO detectors once the weather changes, and the car will start (in spite of the block heater being plugged in, this kind of deep cold defeats it, and my car won’t start. Maybe I need a new block heater too. Argh!) Anyway, any place I can get CO detectors is at least a car ride away.
Cripes, maybe I should just get a canary. Oh wait, the pet store is also a car ride away.
Will Amazon deliver to you? (or Walmart or Target)
I live in a hi-rise. CO detectors are mandatory (legal requirement) and, as @wolfpup mentioned, mine is an all-in-one detector (smoke, CO, maybe other things like radon…not sure).
No matter; this weather is forecast to break early next week. It won’t be “break out the beach gear” weather, but it will be more reasonable winter temps for this location at this time of year. As I saw on tonight’s forecast, we’re looking at -10C on Monday—hardly balmy, but a temp that my car doesn’t mind starting in, and is a damn sight warmer (ha!) than now. The car has started at -10C before.
One of the strange/interesting/different things about where we live is that there is no enforcement as far as permits. When I had a deck put on my house I asked the contractor about a permit. He told me he’s never bothered with one except for a house “in town”.
We’ve had a new roof, an extension of our roof to cover a porch, new windows, new siding, rebuilding of outbuildings, etc. Never a permit.
We replaced our A/C last summer and the furnace with it when the A/C went out. (Original equipment in a 27 year old house.) So unless we have a power outage when the sub-zero temps hit this weekend, we should be warm and toasty.
