The Fire Down Below

Furnace trouble. Anyone that lives in a place that has a snowy winter can understand how ominous that sounds. I've been having furnace trouble lately. It started with a phone call from Tina. The house is 62 degrees and the furnace isn't coming on. I came right home. I found the pilot had gone out, no big deal. I re-lit the pilot and the furnace roared to life, filling the house with warmth. I returned to work but when I had a moment, I read up on how my kind of furnace works. The pilot had never gone out before and stuff doesn't just start happening to machines without a reason. I learned that the most common failure that causes a pilot to go out is faulty thermocouple. They cost about $10 and can be changed in minutes. I picked one up and kept it handy in case the pilot went out again. It did and when it did I replaced the thermocouple. After that, I wasn't able to keep the pilot lit, it was very weak. During my reading, I learned that the second most common cause of a pilot going out was a dirty pilot nozzle, so I took the nozzle off and cleaned it. When I put it back together and lit the pilot, it stayed on. Yeah! I noticed the pilot seemed really strong. I hadn't payed much attention to it before it gave me trouble so I sort of figured the nozzle was just dirty so it had been weak all along. I still made sure the CO2 detector was working and did a little more reading. I couldn't find anything about how intense the flame should be, just descriptions of the appearance.

On next call from Tina with furnace problems, I decided to call for help. I had done all the novice things I could. I called GTR, the same contractors I use at work. I've been dealing with them for a long time and they have always done a good job for a fair price. They sent a tech right over. I left work to meet him at the house. When he got there, I told him about what had happened, what I had done and what was happening now. He checked a few things and took a couple readings and determined we weren't getting enough gas to keep the fire burning. The gas valve was bad and he couldn't get one until the next morning. He left me with a space heater. Bummer. Tina had gone out and picked up a couple space heaters when I told her this problem was beyond me. We actually had a nice cozy night when the furnace was down. The rest of the house got cold, but the bedroom area stayed nice and toasty.

The next morning GTR came back with the new valve. They put it in and everything started working. Our house warmed right back up and there was much rejoicing. We had a $320 bill but I noticed the labor and parts had been figured a bit low. The tech shaved off a few dollars here and there. Like I said, I've been dealing with these guys for a while. That was nice of them.

This morning I woke up to a cold house. Damn. The pilot was out again. I couldn't get it to stay lit either. Today is Saturday. Service calls come with an extra high hourly charge on weekends. I had to have heat, I called GTR again. Mike, the on call tech showed right up and looked things over. He took some readings and found I had very low gas pressure coming into the house. My problem was with DTE, the gas company, Mike was sure of it. He left and I called DTE. I felt better about that. DTE pays to fix their stuff, not me.

About 15 minutes later the on call guy the gas company called me. I gave him a brief rundown on what had transpired, complete with the pressure readings and concluded with "the furnace tech told me the problem is with the meter." The voice on the other end of the phone replied "He's probably wrong" and explained their stuff is reliable and so on and so forth. He had it figured out before he even got here! He sounded like a grouchy know-it-all. I've worked with these kind of guys before. In fact, until recently, I had one of these kind of guys working for me. I know how to deal with the grouchy know-it-all. I got my Carhartts on and went outside to wait for him to arrive. When he got there, we walked around to where the gas line enters my house. It is simply a pipe coming out of the ground that hooks to two devices and then to a pipe that goes into my house. He used a wrench and took off the gas meter saying "If there's good pressure here, the problems in your pipes." When he opened the valve, we could hear the gas rushing out. "That's good pressure, you got other problems." He beamed.

I pointed to the other object that came after the meter. "What's that thing?"

"That's the regulator" he said matter of factly as he wiped the snow off, "They hardly ever go bad." As he wiped the snow, he noticed there was a protective cap missing. "This cap is gone, these things get ruined when ice and snow gets in there." He said.

"So that may be bad?"

He disconnected it from the pipe and shook it. "It sounds like it's broken."

hmmmm

The grouchy know-it-all went back to his van and got a new regulator. He was pretty quiet the rest of the time he worked. I've found that grouchy know-it-alls don't like to admit they were wrong. You have to lead them into discovering that on their own. I wanted to give him a little "in your face" lecture but I fought back the urge. I'm trying to remember to take the high road when I can.

The furnace has been working all day. I don't want to say everything is fixed quite yet because we've thought that a few times. My fingers are crossed.

PS-I started this blog entry a few days ago, the working title then was Sh*t F*ck Furnace.