They've all been telling me how hard the wind was blowing down around Mesquite and Las Vegas. So..... we're not the only ones with bad luck. Bev and Brent's tree blew over on the neighbors house today. Apparently it will cost more than $1000 to get it off before they even see if the house has damage. I think she meant that is the deductible.
Guess what happened last night at our brand new house that we've only been in for about one month. Joe came in where I was watching late TV and said "Isn't it getting cold in here?" And real quick we discovered the furnace wasn't running. It had quit and we couldn't get it to go. I didn't quite know who to call for this, so called the gas company and left a message at 1 a.m. He soon called me back and recommended three places to call. The repairman Gary from All Tech in Pinedale called back and came over within an hour of me calling him. Very nice person. He got here at 2:30 a.m and crawled up his ladder into the attic and checked things out.
I really liked this young man, he seems sharp and he sure knew what he was doing. He found that there is no vent through the roof for the furnace. And also that any snow on the roof would obstruct any possible venting there. The open vent pipe is pointed at some kind of ordinary attic vent, but the fumes aren't venting out through that. They are venting into the attic. He could smell the fumes and said probably carbon monoxide is coming down into the house. That situation was combined with a line that was almost kinked that caused a pressure switch to turn off. Because of that the furnace is all full of carbon already and will be hard to get cleaned up. Also a union in a gas valve needs to be installed. There is also no platform under/around the furnace for a person to work from as there should be, he had to stand on the rafters to work. He says none of this is up to code. I’m surprised that the inspector didn’t find any of this.
Gene got the furnace running so we could stay warm (so we thought), and said he would try to come back Saturday or Monday and do the roof vent properly and clean out the carbon and make sure it is all up to code. He was really worried about the whole situation and us being in here with it in that condition. He took pictures with his phone of all that he found and will email them to me along with a report of all he found. He said the person who installed the furnace obviously didn’t know what they were doing. It's cost $120 so far – I don’t know what it will cost getting it all fixed and vented the way it should be. We will buy a carbon monoxide detector tomorrow.
It is apparently now up to me to contact the builder John Hilton and get the situation straightened out with him. For certain I don’t want Mr. Hilton to work on the furnace or his son or workmen either. I think it is imperative to have an expert doing the work, I’m going to request/insist that he pay for whatever it’s going to cost. And now we have a warranty which is probably voided by the bad installation. ?? It seems to me this is a pretty big ticket item, and with the way Gene described it, he is very worried that we could die in here. That may be dramatic, but possible under the circumstances. We've never met the builder/seller Hilton and I don’t know what kind of man he is, but I don’t want to be in a fight with him over it. I’ve had enough stuff going wrong lately and am not in the mood to deal with much more.
Gene didn’t come back or call today (Saturday). I’m sure he thinks the furnace is running and keeping the place warm. He got it running but once the furnace came up to temperature and cycled off, it wouldn’t come on again. That is probably the way it should work under the circumstances. It shouldn’t be running.
When he left apparently the way it sounded, he has commitments and his help is busy or unavailable, he didn’t say what. He said he would try to come back ASAP and make the whole thing right, but that it should be done today. In the meantime we are using the little natural gas fireplace and have the oven on with the oven door open. I don’t especially like that either. We have a small heater here. It’s supposed to get very cold - way below zero - so we're somewhat worried about the water lines. The wind is supposed to blow up to 40 mph - tomorrow I think.
I only slept about an hour last night. So am going to go relax now. I'll keep you posted.
