I was feeling cold even in the house and checked the thermostat a few times... wondering why the furnace wan't keeping up... not getting up to the set temperature of +21C.... it seemed to be running steadily.....
Finally I went down there and looked in the furnace room...and at this...
the diabolical red eye....reminds me of The Terminator...
If it is just like this....still and red...it's a good thing. But... if it is flashing on and off in a series of well choreographed blips... it's trouble. Today.... it was 3 short and one long..... aha! Definitely not right.
There is a troubleshooting list right beside it...
Lying on my belly, with my glasses on... I could clearly see that 31 indicates heat pressure switch not functioning correctly or a relay problem... great. I could have turned everything off I suppose,... and let it restart..but, usually it takes a while...and I was not about to let the better part of the day go by without getting a service call organized. They tried to put me off til tomorrow...but..eh..... it's a long cold night without any heat ...even inside a house, so I insisted they come today.
I had already taken out the big electrostatic filters as instructed on the phone...they didn't look dirty, but, I left them out...no improvement. The service guy (who speaks very little English) shows up.... opens the furnace door and says...."Wow...hot"... takes out the other small screen filters (they were filthy) ....... hands them to me and says..."You vacuum...I put back...it work". Oh....
His next sentence was...."How you pay"? .... and the bill for that....$115.00 with tax. How humiliating. I thought I was a pretty good housekeeper...but, my slothfulness with the furnace filters just cost a bundle. Lesson learned.
Do your furnace filters need a bit of a vacuuming? .... if I save one person a whopping "regular-service-call" bill as well as being totally humiliated.... this will be a great day yet...