On a cold quiet night while tucked warmly in bed with just the hum of the furnace being heard, something was amiss in the house.
The hum stopped and did not restart. What could it be? Checking the thermostat, my husband could tell something was wrong. It was getting colder in the house and the furnace was not starting automatically.
Turning on the light, he headed downstairs to see what the problem was.
Drip, drip, drip. The top of the furnace had water on it. Looking above, the humidifier that we recently cleaned was leaking onto the furnace. Turning the furnace off, my husband cleaned the water up and headed back to the comfort of a warm bed.
When I awoke, my head was cold. I headed to the bathroom and said to no one in particular “It’s cold in here.” The words “the furnace stopped working” pierced the early morning air.
Sometimes it’s just too early to have problems, isn’t it?
Nevertheless, I waited til 8 a.m. and called the furnace company who had been out earlier this fall to clean the furnace. They gave me a 2 hour appointment time and arrived around noon.
The technician opened the furnace door and saw water. He checked and re-checked different areas of the furnace and there were several places that were moist.
“Well, I’m going to have to replace the control panel,” he said. “The problem is … ” Uh oh, my thoughts interrupted him. “The problem is that once I replace the control panel the problem still might not be resolved because there are other areas that are wet. If it were me, I would replace the whole furnace instead of spending a lot of money on a 20 year old furnace.”
“I have to also let you know …” Â Oh dear, here it comes. Â “… your humidifier is not going to work with a new furnace so you’ll have to replace that too if you get a new furnace.”
Oh, great. I called my husband who hates to replace anything that can be fixed and we agreed to replace both the furnace and the humidifier.
Here’s a picture of the old furnace. The humidifier is the black box at the top.
The Fraser Johnston furnace was replaced with a Coleman that has a 95.5 AFUE Variable Speed. In layman’s terms, it’s supposed to be really good.
The humidifier is a Honeywell and is fan powered. It’s a little different from the old one in that it has a filter that needs to be replaced once a year. They relocated it so it wasn’t over the furnace now.
Our new humidifier and furnace seem to work a lot better than the older ones as I don’t feel as cold in the house now that the humidifier is working properly.
For Christmas, my husband received a Nest wall thermostat. It’s really nice as you can set your thermostat from your phone when you’re away. You can also check online to see when the furnace kicks on and off.
Before we bought our house, a friend cautioned “you shouldn’t buy a 20 year old house as things start to fall apart starting at the 15 year mark.” I guess he was right.
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