The Heat Is On

Okay, this Glenn Frey thing isn't working out. Let's start again.

I got home with my newly repaired, toasty warm car to a house that was about 60 degrees. My furnace had conked out. Again. Apparently someone up there wants me to be cold.

After the last time my furnace conked out, I've become a world champion-caliber pilot light starter. So, when I couldn't get that done after five tries, I knew something was up. It was also the way I couldn't get it started. It wasn't that it wouldn't light, or that it wouldn't stay lit. It'd stay lit for about two seconds, and then conk out.

And here's where Steve's long-winded engineer-style explaination of how a pilot light works helped again. Since I understood what all the parts are, I could develop a decent hypothesis of what the problem was. Must be the thermocouple, I said to myself.

As far as home repairs go, that's not a very tricky one to do. Assuming you know what you're doing. (Editor's Note: J has no idea what he's doing.)

Well, I got one of those one-year homeowner's policy things, saying if something breaks, they'll send someone over to fix it, flat $75 deductable, whether it's a leaky sink or a new A/C. So, I thought I'd avail myself of that. Since it was about 7 when I finally called, all the places that could send someone over were closed. So after filling the bathtub and rolling out the ol' trusty portable radiator, I settled in for a nice sleep, dreading walking damp through the ice box of a house in the morning.

They called this morning, and the repair man dropped by at 11. We both arrived home at exactly the same time. I mentioned I thought it was a themocouple, so he grabbed one from the van and put it in his pocket.

He came upstairs heading back to the van, mentioning that it was the gas valve. The gas valve is also relatively easy to replace, if you have two pipe wrenches (Editors Note: At last count, J had zero pipe wrenches) and you know what doing (Editor's Note: Nope).

Despite this being a 15 minute job (for him) replacing the gas valve runs $300. After deductable, the company saved me $225. When you factor in the valve, two pipe wrenches, seven hours of my time, the near certainty of injuring myself, emotional distress and punitive damages, that's about what it'd cost me, assuming I ever figured out the problem. To make this an even better deal, since he knew I wasn't paying for it, bless his heart, the repair guy tossed in a new thermocouple too. Well, that and he'd probably put it on first, so it'd be worth more to him to just leave it there than it would be to take it back off.

Anyway, I think I'm done with being cold for the next little bit. Although after I got the latest gas bill, I think I might want to be cold a bit more often.