brr.

Feb. 12th, 2006 09:39 pm
cellio: (fire)
[personal profile] cellio
It's 61 degrees in the house. That is not what the thermostat is set for.

I see no evidence of a pilot light on the furnace. I also can't tell exactly where one is supposed to put fire to relight it on our ancient and venerable furnace. There is a hum that suggests that something is happening -- presumably cold water is being propelled through the radiators. If there's a fuse involved, I can't find it. (I have more homeowner points than Dani, but my previous house had forced-air heat, so things are a little different. Also newer furnaces.)

I know that any not-incompetent homeowner is supposed to be able to relight a pilot light. But you know the canonical cartoon involving clouds of smoke and singed hair when people do that? That's got to be based on something, I figure.

So after a round of "do you feel safe to light it?", we decided to invoke the maintenance plan. If it's just the pilot, well, we get a slightly-expensive lesson in how to light it (we have to pay for after-hours calls); if it's more severe, we'd need the expert anyway.

Update 10:05PM: Kudos to Sullivan Service, who had someone here in 45 minutes. It was a minor member of the "take things apart" class of problems; clogged pilot assembly. (I would wonder how many decades' worth of soot that was, except that we had the furnace cleaned this fall.) We also got a lesson in lighting the pilot.

Sullivan Service trouble

Date: 2006-02-13 01:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brokengoose.livejournal.com
About 8 years ago, I called Sullivan Service for a non-emergency problem. If I remember correctly, it was a leaky pipe joint (something that I know how to fix, but just didn't want to fix). I had to be at work, so my girlfriend waited for the repairman. He charged her over $300 for the work (an excessive price for a 30 minute job). Then, he informed her that the hoses behind the washer were frayed and he offered to replace those for an additional (high!) fee. The trick: we'd just replaced those hoses a few weeks before. They -did- have to be replaced again -- because somebody had taken a file to them.

I no longer do business with Sullivan Service.

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