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So, now I'm doing furnace repair
Apr. 5th, 2011 07:55 pmOur neighbor cornered me as I was arriving home from work (peril of being on a bike, everyone can just pull up and talk to you). He was having furnace trouble.
I showered, changed and went over with a voltmeter. It was blinking pressure switch error codes, but that turned out to be a red herring. After fiddling with the pressure switch for 20 minutes, I dug deeper and found that his hot plate ignitor had burned out. He was unhappy until I said "no problem, I have a spare at my place."
It took a bit of metalwork since his ignitor was slightly different than mine, but no real problem. I went onto eBay and ordered a replacement. They're about $20 on eBay, or $60 if you buy them locally. Add in the $200 call-out charge, and it's definitely worth taking a shot at the repairs yourself, since there's not usually all that much to go wrong with a furnace. So far out of 3 repairs I've had one cold solder joint and two burned out ignitors.
Add in the bad relay for the A/C compressor, which was $12 on eBay and $120 locally, and I definitely get my HVAC stuff online. And for the price it's DEFINITELY worth stocking a few spare parts of things that are failure prone. $35 bought me a backup ignitor and relay.
I showered, changed and went over with a voltmeter. It was blinking pressure switch error codes, but that turned out to be a red herring. After fiddling with the pressure switch for 20 minutes, I dug deeper and found that his hot plate ignitor had burned out. He was unhappy until I said "no problem, I have a spare at my place."
It took a bit of metalwork since his ignitor was slightly different than mine, but no real problem. I went onto eBay and ordered a replacement. They're about $20 on eBay, or $60 if you buy them locally. Add in the $200 call-out charge, and it's definitely worth taking a shot at the repairs yourself, since there's not usually all that much to go wrong with a furnace. So far out of 3 repairs I've had one cold solder joint and two burned out ignitors.
Add in the bad relay for the A/C compressor, which was $12 on eBay and $120 locally, and I definitely get my HVAC stuff online. And for the price it's DEFINITELY worth stocking a few spare parts of things that are failure prone. $35 bought me a backup ignitor and relay.
