Tough Canadians?

March seems to be a bad time for our furnaces.

Image: Google

In that month, back in 2010, on a frigid night where the outside temperature was -20°C, not including the windchill factor, we were awakened by the piercing chirp of our carbon monoxide alarm. Apparently, our 10-year-old furnace had developed a crack in the heat-exchange unit and was leaking gas.

I shut off the gas, vented the house for about an hour, and in the morning I called a service to inspect and assess the damage of our non-functional furnace. I learned that the furnace, which had been installed when the house was built, only had a 10-year warranty, which had expired about three months ago. The cost of repair on an aging furnace was not worth it, so we replaced the whole furnace.

Our new furnace came with another 10-year warranty, except for the heat-exchange unit, which had a lifetime warranty. In about 40 hours after we were rudely awakened by our CO monitor, we had a new furnace and were toasty as can be. The night before the replacement furnace arrived, DW, the kids, and I huddled together in our family room, warmed by our gas fireplace.

There was no alarm this time. We simply started feeling colder.

I know that the furnace was working on Monday morning because I remember hearing it when I was in the basement, taking care of our cats' litter boxes. For about a week, the furnace had begun sounding louder. When I investigated the noise, it seemed like it was just one of the vents that flowed out, directly above the unit, vibrating. In fact, holding the vent with my hands would cause the vibration to stop. But still, as I was cleaning the litter boxes, I told myself that we should get the furnace serviced, to make sure that it was fine.

It wasn't fine. Apparently, some time later, it stopped working.

We ordered a service call, and when the technician opened the furnace, he discovered that condensation, from the exhaust pipe, was leaking into the unit. It had fried the circuit board and had begun rusting other wires and components. It was going to cost $1300 just to replace the circuit board, and that wasn't going to solve the root problem as to what was causing the leak or why that issue was causing the vibrations.

We were probably looking at another couple of grand to fix everything, the technician estimated. He added that the average lifespan of our type of furnace was 15 years, so investing that much to repair a unit that might only have a couple more years left in it might not make sense.

I had to agree.

The next day, a salesperson came out to give us options for a new furnace. He showed us his least-expensive unit, that would do the job but wasn't as good as what we already had. He showed us his top-of-the-line model, which was WiFi-enabled and had so many features that my head was spinning.

And then he did what I knew he was going to do and should have just led with: a furnace that was comparable to what we had but included a new thermostat and was insulated, which would make the unit even quieter than our old unit had been before it started rattling. This unit had a 10-year warrantee for parts and labour, a lifetime warranty on the heat exchanger, and if the heat exchanger were to somehow go in the first seven years, they would replace the entire furnace.

We liked that deal but we wanted to shop around. Though I liked the salesperson and we had dealt with this company when we replaced our hot water tank with a tankless heating system, and even though the salesperson offered me an $800 loyalty discount, I wanted to see what else was out there.

The next person who came to our house, 48 hours into being without a furnace, inspected our unit and confirmed that it would be more expensive to repair than would make sense, for its age. He was also a sales rep, and had quite a few makes and models to show us.

The unit that best-matched the furnace that we already had and was comparable to the furnace that we had been shown by the other sales rep was about $500 less than our first quote. While this model didn't come with a new thermostat nor was it insulated, those weren't deal-breakers. Five-hundred bucks is five-hundred bucks.

My first loyalty, however, was to the company that we had dealt with, before. A couple of years ago, when we had them come for a maintenance call on out hot-water heater, they found an issue that was no longer covered under the manufacturer's warranty. But because our model of heater had a recall on a part (which was not giving us any issue), the service guy got the manufacturer to replace our unit, and we received an even better system, free of charge (except for the service call).

They won my loyalty that day.

The $500 price gap would actually be only a $300 difference because we had already paid $200 to the first folks for the original visit, on Monday. In the original price negotiation, that $200 was also going to be incorporated in the price of the furnace replacement, on top of the $800 loyalty discount.

I called the first salesguy and told him that if he could find his way to bring the price down by another $300, he would have the sale. He said that he'd have to check with his manager but that the ask wasn't unreasonable: however, we probably wouldn't be able to get the furnace until Friday.

Five minutes later, he called back, said that he would match the competitor's price, and that he was able to secure installers for the next day (Thursday).

Loyalty cemented.

By the time that the installers arrived, DW and I had had no working furnace in more than 72 hours. But we're tough Canadians. We dressed in layers. We shared time with the one space heater that we have, so that we could warm up our respective home offices during the day. Outside of work, we hung out in the same rooms so that we could benefit from the heater, and the cats also snuggled up to us for mutual added warmth.

We were fine.

As the installers checked on our existing, usable ducts, they detected a fault that was the root of the leak, and it dated all the way back to the construction of our house. The exhaust pipe, which led outside, was sloped the wrong way. Instead of condensation heading out of the home, it would run back, ever so slightly, to the furnace. Surprisingly, the team that installed our second furnace didn't catch the problem.

This technician said he's been doing this job for more than 26 years and he occasionally comes across this problem. He said it would be easy to fix and set out to work—all part of the installation so no additional cost!

A few hours later, the work was done. Both technicians did a great job, and DW and I don't have to tough out the cold (the house dropped to 10°C at night and warmed up to 12°C in rooms that didn't have the benefit of our space heater).

The cats seem happy, too (both technicians loved cats and weren't bothered by our curious creatures).

Yes, we're tough Canadians. To a point. I don't know if we would have been in good spirits if we would have had to wait until Friday for the new furnace, and would have been miserable by today, which was a potential estimate for replacement by the competing salesperson.

But for 72 hours, we're tough.