Peace and Quiet

Our furnace has been making a horrible noise. A loud, unpleasant grinding sound. The first repairman we had come look at it insisted that the noise was not unusual, even when I told him it often stopped conversations in the living room dead, and you could hear the furnace in our neighbor's house.

The second repairman told Noel the cost for the part was $600, plus $200 for labour. About the cost of a new furnace, in other words.

So we looked on the internet, found our part, and less than $100 later it was in a box on our doorstep. And this morning, we took it downstairs and did the repair:

The thing about this sort of repair is that you have to know the part that is not working, of course. The second repairman confirmed what we'd thought, and then it was a simple matter of looking at the part and seeing it was held in place by a couple of bolts and a strap.

This part seems to have gone back because the furnace was not installed correctly, and water was allowed to build up in the motor and rust it.

Once we had the old part out, it was fairly simple to transfer the pieces attached to it to the new part.

Then we just slipped it back into place, reattached it, and connected the wires where they had been connected.

The process took all of ten minutes. So in ten minutes we saved $700. Not bad, and we were still able to do several other pressing tasks in the rest of the day.

The new part is delightfully quiet.

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posted by ayse on 03/24/07