Winter is coming

And it’s making itself felt

Back in April, the furnace malfunctioned – the blower came on and kept blowing, and nothing short of unplugging the furnace would make it stop. Since the weather was already getting warmer, we just left it unplugged, in the hopes that we would have some money to pay for repairs by the time the weather got cold again.

Three weeks ago, the weather began to feel a bit chilly, and since furnace technicians are busy in the fall, we called to make an appointment for repairs. The first company we called was booked solid for more than a month, but the second one was able to make an appointment in just over a week.

The technician came and checked out the furnace, and he reported that there was a bad circuit board in the blower controller. Since our furnace was so old, he wasn’t sure that he would be able to find a replacement board. Old? Why, when we bought the house, the furnace was brand-new, the latest high-tech, high-efficiency, pilot-free marvel. The home sellers had receipts and warranty paperwork and all sorts of nifty things. The brand-new furnace was a big selling point for the house. And that was only … oh, well, OK, that was 15 years ago.

Anyhow, the technician said that if he couldn’t find a replacement board, he would have to replace the entire blower unit, and since the cost for that was nearly the cost of a brand-new furnace, we might as well go for that.

The good news is that the technician phoned last week to say that he had managed to find a replacement circuit board, and he installed it last Friday, just in time for the weather to turn cold. It still cost a lot, but not anywhere near what a new furnace would have cost.

We went up to Five O’Clock Somewhere for the weekend, where we had front-row seats for the arrival of wintry weather. Saturday was blustery and chilly, and Sunday was cloudy, windy, and downright cold. We even got a snowstorm – not enough to bury anything, but a dusting over everything.

Sunday night we arrived back home to find that there had even been flakes in the air in Albuquerque, although the only indication that they had been there was that the streets and lawns were damp. The television news reported blizzard conditions and dangerous driving in the eastern part of the state.

Since the furnace had been switched off so long, the thermostat’s batteries had died and I needed to reprogram it. But now we have heat, and it’s coming on and going off exactly when we want it, and life is good.