It was warm enough Tuesday morning that I didn’t take a coat to work. By the time I left, I wished I had. The temperature dropped something like 30 degrees during the day, almost reaching freezing temperatures. That night, we discovered that our heater, once again, had died.
I’m too lazy to go back and look but I’ll bet you could find half a dozen posts on my blog pertaining to having the heat and air people out at our house, and those were just the blog-worthy visits. If I had to guess I’d say we’ve had our HVAC system worked on at least twice a year every year since we moved into this house back in 2002. At this point I think we’ve replaced every single part of the system and have started over replacing things that have already been replaced. Except maybe the floor vents, I think.
Tuesday night the house got cool but by Wednesday night it was downright cold. I did all the same things I do every time the stupid thing breaks. I messed with the thermostat. Nothing. I unplugged, counted to thirty, and re-plugged the unit in. Nothing. I checked toggle switches, kill switches, and breakers. Nothing. I called friends who know more about these things than I do. Nothing.
Wednesday night, if you believe the thermostat, it got down to around 50 degrees in the house. The kids stayed warm in their beds, momma stayed warm underneath her electric blanket, and I slept in my recliner (and later the couch) near the fireplace to “keep an eye on the fire” because everybody in this house thinks our house will catch on fire if there’s a fire in the fireplace and nobody is near it — never mind the fact that you can only feel the heat from our fireplace if you are sitting on the bricks directly in front of it. I have computers that give off more heat than that thing.
Today the repairman came out and looked at the thing for about an hour, completely stumped. At least it wasn’t something simple. At one point I thought, maybe it was something simple and he was just out there poking around, making me feel like I was getting my money’s worth. That’s what I’d do anyhow, but no, this guy was really stumped. Finally he decided the circuit board was bad, so off he ran to a place that sells circuit boards for heaters and returned with one in hand. He installed it and … nothing. (Don’t feel bad guy, I know the feeling.) He then looked down and noticed a wire that was completely burned in half. He said maybe it had been shorted out or maybe it was from a lightning strike. (That last part seems doubtful; as Jeff pointed out, I have way too many computers plugged in and running to have survived a spike like that.) Regardless, after replacing the cord with one of my cords he found in the garage, the heater shook and sputtered back to life.
As snow and ice continued to form outside, over the next several hours the house’s temperature climbed from the high 40s to the high 70s. By the time I made it out of the house to pick up everybody and back home again, the house was nice and toasty and everybody approved.
$250 for the board, $100 in labor. Not having to sleep next to the fireplace again? Priceless.
Wait a minute. You had to buy a board you didn’t even need? That doesn’t seem right.
According to the guy, the wire toasted the board. We never tried it with the new wire and the old board though so, who knows for sure.