Furnace
Okay, so I've been having little "I hate my house! SO! MUCH!" moments for the last little while. Along with the ongoing renovations (which we thought were in line to be finished by this Friday, but now they won't be because we found additional damage to the flooring in the basement that hasn't even been assessed yet!) we've also been dealing with furnace troubles. It's actually been going on for a couple of winters. We've tried replacing the thermostat, cleaning the filter, all kinds of things.
For a while, we were keeping the thermostat set to 26, because that way when it swung low between heating cycles (an average temperature drop of 6 degrees) it wasn't going much below room temperature. Then, two weeks ago, I had a migraine that lasted for several days, and turning the temperature down made it go away! That's when we decided to resort to wearing layers. We had long since discovered that going downstairs and physically switching the furnace off and then on again would make it fire, at least briefly, so we were taking turns doing that.
We have a friend who is a teacher but Knows Things about furnaces, so once school let out for the Christmas holiday, he was going to come over and take a look at it for us next weekend. We were content to wait.
Then, on Sunday evening, we couldn't get the damned thing to come up to temperature at all. We were up and down the stairs every hour or so, flipping our switch, but the temperature dropped gradually from 17 to 16... 15.... When we went to bed My Sweetie realized that if we both just went to sleep, there was a very real possibility that during the night the temperature would drop far enough that we might have pipes freezing. So he stayed up until 4:00 am, flipping the switch periodically until he got a much more clear idea of what the problem was, and managed the coax the heat up far enough that he could go to sleep.
It seemed what was happening was that the firing of the burner to heat the air, and the running of the fan to circulate it were not coinciding properly. The fan would run *first* causing our vents to blow *cold* air at us, THEN the burner would fire, but at the same time the fan would cut out, and then the whole system would shut down until the next time the switch was flipped off and back on again. He figured out that if he waited and flipped the switch again immediately after the burner cut out each time, he could actually raise the temperature in the house. But it took a while, and the temperature actually dropped all the way down to 12 degrees that night.
The next day, he actually called the plumbing and heating outfit who had installed the furnace (their sticker was still on it) to see if they could send somebody out to take a look. They couldn't spare anyone until at least Tuesday, but the guy actually told My Sweetie over the phone that the problem might just be a dirty thermocouple, and explained how to access and clean it. This took My Sweetie all of about 15 seconds, and... COMPLETELY FIXED THE PROBLEM!!!
Now, bearing in mind that if they'd been able to spare a worker, they would have likely sent somebody out and charged us a hundred bucks to have THEM do exactly the same thing, I'm quite grateful that they were willing to tell My Sweetie what to do over the phone, which didn't cost us anything.
I'm also grateful that it's warm in my house again.
For a while, we were keeping the thermostat set to 26, because that way when it swung low between heating cycles (an average temperature drop of 6 degrees) it wasn't going much below room temperature. Then, two weeks ago, I had a migraine that lasted for several days, and turning the temperature down made it go away! That's when we decided to resort to wearing layers. We had long since discovered that going downstairs and physically switching the furnace off and then on again would make it fire, at least briefly, so we were taking turns doing that.
We have a friend who is a teacher but Knows Things about furnaces, so once school let out for the Christmas holiday, he was going to come over and take a look at it for us next weekend. We were content to wait.
Then, on Sunday evening, we couldn't get the damned thing to come up to temperature at all. We were up and down the stairs every hour or so, flipping our switch, but the temperature dropped gradually from 17 to 16... 15.... When we went to bed My Sweetie realized that if we both just went to sleep, there was a very real possibility that during the night the temperature would drop far enough that we might have pipes freezing. So he stayed up until 4:00 am, flipping the switch periodically until he got a much more clear idea of what the problem was, and managed the coax the heat up far enough that he could go to sleep.
It seemed what was happening was that the firing of the burner to heat the air, and the running of the fan to circulate it were not coinciding properly. The fan would run *first* causing our vents to blow *cold* air at us, THEN the burner would fire, but at the same time the fan would cut out, and then the whole system would shut down until the next time the switch was flipped off and back on again. He figured out that if he waited and flipped the switch again immediately after the burner cut out each time, he could actually raise the temperature in the house. But it took a while, and the temperature actually dropped all the way down to 12 degrees that night.
The next day, he actually called the plumbing and heating outfit who had installed the furnace (their sticker was still on it) to see if they could send somebody out to take a look. They couldn't spare anyone until at least Tuesday, but the guy actually told My Sweetie over the phone that the problem might just be a dirty thermocouple, and explained how to access and clean it. This took My Sweetie all of about 15 seconds, and... COMPLETELY FIXED THE PROBLEM!!!
Now, bearing in mind that if they'd been able to spare a worker, they would have likely sent somebody out and charged us a hundred bucks to have THEM do exactly the same thing, I'm quite grateful that they were willing to tell My Sweetie what to do over the phone, which didn't cost us anything.
I'm also grateful that it's warm in my house again.