yay, no furnace for the coldest weekend of the year... Funniness Inside Thread So, waking up this morning I thought it felt a little colder than normal. I woke up earlier than normal and merely fell back to sleep after pulling some extra covers on. I finally got out of bed around noon and proceeded to take a shower. I got dressed and still felt it was a little cold, but didn't think much of it since its like -10 outside. I went to the thermostat to crank it up a little bit and to my amazement it was 57 degrees in the house. I was like, WTF? I then checked the settings to see if a roomate messsed with it and it was still set to 68. So, I went to check the furnace out. I call a friend, who's quite knowledgeable with HVAC, he said to reset the power and do a few other little things to diagnose it. Nothing happened. I was able to manually turn the fan on, but no heat. He said get the owner on the phone and have him send a guy out. I then called the landlord. He said to call the number posted on the furnace and they'd come take care of it. So I call them, and it turns out that since they had installed our furnace, they had stopped doing HVAC and only are plumbers now... GREAT! They said they are still licensed and could do the work, but they'd charge $200 to drive each way, plus overtime pay, plus parts. And they wanted a credit card up front, and at the time I hadn't gotten a hold of the owner anyways to pay. Thanks for nothing. So I call the Landlord back and he says he'll call the owner to figure it out. I get a call back and the landlord tells me that Centerpoint can take care of it and just call them. He said to have them bill us and the owner will refund us. So I call Centerpoint, who was surprisingly helpful, and they sent a guy out asap. He gets here and goes to look at it. We look at it together for a while and he was baffled. He checked the wiring and the error code sequence that was blinking said "either faulty igniter, bad ground, or insufficient voltage". This didn't help much and he basically tested the whole thing electrically and looked at the board. He was still perplexed. He basically narrowed it down to either a faulty board and/or ignitor but wasn't certain. He left and said he'd order parts to be delivered this evening and another service guy would be out asap to install. At this point it was all going smoothly and thought I'd have heat this evening for guests to come over and drink. Well, I get a call 15 minutes after he left and said the parts weren't available until Monday, but the good news is that they were going to send out some space heaters. "Great, space heaters. At least that should tide me over for the weekend." I thought. That's until they arrived and saw what they thought was adequate to heat a 2000+ sq. foot house in -30 weather. here are the pics :laugh:. Beer bottle used for reference of the minute size of these things. It'll be like a camping this weekend. The nice thing is that i don't have to refrigerate the beers, just keep them in the house. Anyone who wants to stop over to drink is invited!
Wow, dude, those space heaters could maybe heat a hamster cage. and a whole 2 of them? they were pretty generous :roll:
haha, i know. When he said space heaters I was expecting like big torpedo heaters that can heat a whole garage, but electric. When the doorbell rang and the courier handed them to me, I was like "this is it".
Wow, that's gonna suck. Do you want to borrow a bigger space heater? I have one in the garage, it's a little dusty but it kicks out some decent heat.
where could one obtain said nuclear reactor???? If its electric I'd borrow it for sure. I have a kerosene heater (aspitfire's) in my garage but not sure how good that would be in the house. Don't want to stink it up too badly and get high.
You could also go to Target and buy a portable ceramic heater which work great for keeping small spaces warm (like a bedroom). I have a couple for my kids rooms. They run about $20 - $80 bucks. Probably don't want to spend the money, but if it's really cold might be worth it for the weekend. Just a suggestion. http://www.target.com/gp/search/601...eramic+heaters&url=index=target&ref=sr_bx_1_1
I can also lend you my electric one (ceramic I think) I got when my landlord was fixing heating problems and yet to return (samsclub return policy ftw), but I'm in minneapolis and target is probably closer to you to buy a couple of those for a weekend.
Well, hope the space heater works for ya. It sure it cold out there tonight. When I was waiting with my car idleing, the temp guage went all the way back down to C in about 10 minutes.
well, this is free too. The owner is responsible for all costs. I would have called you, but i didn't know you knew this stuff. next time for sure Its working good. I'm using it downstairs in conjunction with the fireplace. The thermostat shows its 67 down there, so it isn't too bad. Its most notable on the floor. we have all hardwood floors downstairs and its pretty chilly to walk around. I'll you know after tonight. If its bad i may have to give you a call. Thanks for the offer. Me too!!!! Again, i'll let you know after i figure out the heat amount after tonight. Thanks.
drink lots of alcahol.. that'll warm you up.. just make sure oone of you is sober so you don't fall asleep (comatose) and freeze to death
I'm going to buy a bottle of Hot 100. That's always good in hot chocolate.... or just by itself as a shot or drink.
or you can tell the girls to get nekkid and you can all stay warm with BODY heat unless you would rather rub 2 sticks together..... then... you're on your own ha ha ha
Hey I feel your pain... Vortogo, Shibbs, my girlfirend and I were driving my car and what happens... My stupid intercooler piping decided to blow off... Car died had to wait 2 hrs for a tow... O well thats life now i get to fix the piping in -30 weather tomorrow... W00t
Gyah, now my furnace has failed to light twice today. 3 year old Lennox, it just blinks out an error code for failed to ignite. I reset the power and it starts right up and works fine. I tried cleaning the flame sensor, we'll see if that helps.
I get a kick out of the folks down here crying when their furnace goes out when it's above freezing outside anyway. I guess they don't really know about the dangers of pipes freezing as much as we do. My furnace was an old fuel-oil burning unit that was "converted" to run on natural gas once they finally brought the line around. The thermocouple on it used to go out regularly which would kill the furnace. Fortunately the thermocouple was easy to fix and I got sick of having the HVAC guys out all the time so they just gave me a case of them. I hated waking up to 60° in the morning. At least I had two electric water heaters so there was plenty of hot water to go around. I did also have a wood stove that could easily heat the entire house even on the coldest days. In fact one of the things I miss about the MN winters is cutting, splitting, and stacking wood for the stove. I saved so much money on gas using that instead of the furnace when I was home all day. The physical labor at least kept me somewhat in shape :laugh:
Depending on your location I can try to track down some space heaters. A little late for them unless they have more problems with repairing your furnace.
that's what mine is. About a 3 year old Lennox... Not sure I want to smell the house up. I've contemplated it since step 1, but many friends said not to. I should be good. I've made it most of the way through the weekend. Tomorrow will be a day of bumming in front of the fireplace and football games. Thanks though.
Those things can get pretty toasty. It says Caution-Front-Grill-Hot hahaha they work pretty nice in a small room.
furnace is fixed. thanks to prezawagon for letting me borrow his heater and to all others who offered.
