Monday, February 22, 2010

Refurnanced!

And on E-Z terms, too! ...Okay, my furnace guys are not the cheapest in town -- or the most expensive, either -- what they are is honest.* They know what they're doing and they don't pad their time: the igniter was dead, a $75.00 part. Tech cleaned the burners and checked the furnace over, too; that plus the new part took a half-hour...and we have heat! (Butler M-K. They're good guys). Looking at their website, I should'a got a service plan: a flat fee for a year's service, includes parts and would have been less for just this call. Don't know about you, but I average one furnace repair per Winter.

The house actually stayed decently warm (above 50) for over 12 hours with no furnace. 'Way, waaaaay back when I first moved in, the Data Viking helped me with a huge attic (Tam's room) insulation project; what was up there was old and falling down. We put up nice, new stuff plus a vapor barrier. It has definitely helped.
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* Butler M-K has always dealt square, even at my old place, where I'd lose heat when dead birds would clog the draft inducer, a miserable and often smelly problem to fix; they charged nothing but the time and carried the avian carcass(es) to the outside trash, thank you. Compare this to the outfit Roseholme Cottage's previous owner used, who billed him over $100 for a fifteen-minute visit to "replace" a raggedly old permanent filter...and did not touch the filter; same funky thing with holes in it was still there when I moved in. Moral of the story? A) Always check and B) honesty wins.

5 comments:

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

Many were the times Dad (who was a licensed/bonded HVAC tech and electrician, among other things) would go out, replace a filter or a fuse, and say, eh, no charge.

In his later years I think he just enjoyed getting out of the house and being active.

But you're absolutely right about square dealing and "trust but verify". Many were also the times that we cleaned up after someone else had made a bloody mess of things. So it goes.

Anonymous said...

Igniter trouble is bad.

I had a CO problem when mine was replaced. You do have Nighthawks or other CO detectors, right?

Shootin' Buddy

Roberta X said...

Kind of not so much, SB.

Anonymous said...

Your comments reminded me of grad school at Utah. My wife and I rented an interior appartment becasue we knew we could not afford heat. It got down into the 40's during the winter but our neighbors kept it warm enough to avoid freezing pipes.

On the days it would warm to the 50's it was like living in heaven.

Now I enjoy turning the temp to 70 and not worrying about the money.

Roberta X said...

Anon, you would have loved my old, old apartment here -- 400+ square feet in an old brick-and-concrete lump of a building with one exterior wall (over two feet thick) and city steam heat. I've lived in the same building two different times. First time, keeping the heat low enough was a problem; next time, I was a couple of floors higher and they'd taken the radiator out! It was still toasty warm. All that and a decent-sized window, too...but the neighborhood was lousy.