Furnace Broken #2

In November our upstairs furnace broke (where we all sleep). Yesterday we had a broken furnace again, this time the basement one. I came downstairs in the morning and felt a chill, I thought a window was open or that someone had just left the door open. Everything seemed in order, Corey cranked up the heater, but after a while I noticed that the thermostat showed no increase in temperature.

Then, as I stayed home from church with 4 sick girls, I smelled something burning. I couldn't tell where it was coming from, or if it was just my acute pregnancy sense of smell playing games with me. I felt like a search dog sniffing around the main floor. It was strong in the bathroom, in the office, and by the stairs. My best guess was it was either the furnace or the fridge, so I turned them both off in the breaker box. When Corey came home from church, the air had cleared and so I turned them both back on and had him do a smell test. We were able to figure out it was the furnace. I called our awesome furnace guy Eldon (great guy, I highly recommend) and he came out first thing this morning. Yay! I was crossing my fingers that we wouldn't have to wait 3 days for anything to be shipped. Turns out it was the same problem as last time - those darn Lennox control boards! Eldon said they are all busting right now, they've got some 13 year defect glitch or something. Luckily he knows that now and hence has a lot of the control boards on hand. He said there were two burned spots on the control board, so that was what I was smelling. Yikes. Glad we didn't have a fire. Blessing that I was home with sick kids.

So this morning, we were grateful to have all slept in warm beds, but the furnace was not turned on for the main floor. I decided to make an effort to make the morning not miserably cold by waking up at 5:00 and turning the oven on. I cracked open the door and it was on for the next 5 hours... it helped a little to ease the shock of the cold temperatures when the kids came down for breakfast at 6:30. Mostly we all just wore our jackets and came to warm ourselves by the over like it was a camp fire. Toasty.

I prepped myself for another $800 bill, but luckily it was over $300 less this time, yay! I was very happy to pay him such a good price for our quick return to heat. See, it's all a matter of expectations. Last time I was thinking it would cost $300 tops and I about died when I saw the bill. This time since I was prepped and expecting to make a $800 payment, I was happy with just a $540. I'm going to try to always keep my expectations low! Therein lies a key to happiness!