From the Desk of a Plumber’s Wife – No Heat

I’ll tell you a secret. Even though I am the wife of a man who does plumbing and heating, we are not immune from the instances of, “Honey, there is no heat!”, as happened to us last winter.

It started when I realized I was COLD and not because one of the children left the door open. I walked over to the programmable thermostat to see if it was on.

(I should stop here and say that programmable thermostats, which take care of turning down the heat when you don’t need it and having the house nice and toasty when you do. They are a great way to improve efficiency and save money on your heating bill. They are simple to install, simply replacing your existing manual thermostat. R&B can install one with your regular annual service, or any time you like.  Call to arrange for yours.)

Our thermostat said “clean furnace filter – press to dismiss” I pressed to dismiss (wouldn’t you?), and the heat came on!  I was so impressed with myself; I was magic, brilliant, independent!  I had fixed the heat … for about 5 minutes.  That’s about how long it took for the furnace to reject my “fix.”   Yes, we needed a service call, and if this happened to you, you would too.

Want to know what was wrong?  Read the rest of this series of what happened to us and what you can do to learn from our mistakes and prevent the ‘no heat’ call.

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