Why does our furnace go out every winter? (and other burning questions)

The furnace goes out every winter.

I never know what it is. Some switch or some gauge. I’m not an expert in HVAC. All I know is that my wife ends up asking, “Is anyone else cold?” And just as I realize that I actually am feeling kind of cold, she informs me that the thermostat is reading 64 degrees.

I spent about two hours down there in the corner of the old basement next to the cobwebs and the window fans. Detaching that little tube. Using my wife’s hair dryer to dry every little drop.

It always happens at the worst possible time. I don’t know why, but it does. It’s not in November, when it’s a little chilly. It’s not in April when we’re warming up for spring.

It’s in the middle of February, when we’ve got two feet of snow on the ground, highs of 13 degrees in the day and lows of 2 degrees at night. The furnace always goes out during the coldest time of the year.

A history of failure

I remember one year it was out for a couple weeks. They sent a guy out a few days after we called. He installed a temporary switch, but then that went out pretty quick. They forgot to order the permanent one, too. Then, that ended up taking an additional seven days to get here.

By the time they finally came back to fix the furnace, we had all become so used to the space heaters, we had almost forgotten what it was like to have a normal heated house. “Wow, this is pretty nice,” we all said.

Last week, like clockwork, the furnace decided to go out again. Fourteen degrees, February, after 5:00 p.m., so no one is going to come fix it until tomorrow at the earliest. “Lovely,” the resigned father (me) muttered under his breath as he skulked down the stairs to take a look at the cold furnace.

DIY dad

The last time the guy was here to fix it he explained the problem. Condensation in some tube. The buildup of the moisture forces a shutoff. He showed me how to fix it in case it happened again. So there I sat, down by the furnace, with a headlamp around my forehead, fiddling with this thing, trying to remove the little black tube without damaging anything else.

I spent about two hours down there in the corner of the old basement next to the cobwebs and the window fans. Detaching that little tube. Using my wife’s hair dryer to dry every little drop.

Reattaching it. Running upstairs to turn the thermostat back on while my wife and kids ate dinner. Heading back downstairs, turning the furnace back on. Waiting for the blower to kick in and hoping it stayed on this time.

I repeated the process at least 15 times. Over and over again. Little droplets of condensation kept coming out of that little black tube. Remarkably, just as I was about to give up, it worked. The furnace was fixed.

It’s always something

It’s always something. That’s the truth. If we don’t already have enough to do, something else is thrown into the mix. If we aren’t already stressed enough, some other problem comes along.

Of course, the furnace isn’t really that big of a deal. Yeah, it’s freezing up here in the deep north, but it’s not life-threatening when it goes out. Just very annoying. It’s just another thing to take care of when all we want is for everything to go right.

That’s life. We just want everything to go right, but it never really does. There is always something. The furnace that always goes out at the worst possible time is a metaphor and a reminder.

We can’t control everything. Things are going to happen that we can’t anticipate and we can’t fix forever. I know the furnace will go out again. Maybe in a month. Maybe in two months. Maybe in a year. But what I know is that it will go out again, someday. All I can do is wait and then get down there in the corner of the musty basement to try to fix it again when it stops working.

Fuel for reflection

It sounds funny, but I think mundane problems like the furnace going out really are good opportunities for reflection. They are little hidden lessons of life. Opportunities to open up and consider bigger questions. How do we react when things going wrong? Do we try to deny them? Or face them head-on? Do we rely on someone else — and sometimes we need to — or do we rely on ourselves? What do we do?

We can sweep some problems under the rug. Others, we can’t. The furnace is like that. The snow that needs to be shoveled at 6 a.m. is like that. The one toilet in the house that’s not working is like that. The flat tire on your way to dinner is like that. They are small problems, but they’ve got to get solved. They simply can’t be ignored.

Things go wrong. They always will. Sometimes it’s big things, and sometimes it’s little things. For some reason, they always seem to go wrong at the worst possible moment. At the end of the day, it’s up to us to decide how we are going to handle the problems when they eventually come.

It’s true for the little problems of furnaces and toilets. And it’s true for the bigger problems, too. The tough ones without any good answers at all.