We replaced our furnace and ducting about 10 years ago – PG&E was offering a special program for “energy upgrades”. We also replaced our water heater, pipes, and air conditioning at the same time; it was a major project.

Recently, I noticed an odd behavior when the furnace cycled on – it would start, but after a few seconds, the fan would stop for about a minute, then it’d start up again and stay on long enough to bring up the temperature to the desired point. I called the company that had installed the furnace, but they’d vanished in the last 10 years, so I started looking for someone else.

My neighbor across the street had just had some emergency work done by American HVAC and was very pleased with the company and the tech, Rudy. So I called and asked if they could send Rudy to look at my furnace – no hurry. He was at the house in less than two hours!

I told him the problem and he went into the attic, returning with pictures and bad news.

We’d had a 95 AFUE single-stage furnace installed as part of the energy upgrade; high-efficiency furnaces like that need plumbing to get rid of the condensation the furnace produces, and ours had started leaking – into the heat exchanger, among other places. And there was corrosion and mold all over the place because of the leaks.

It’d be less expensive to replace the furnace with a mid-efficiency two-stage unit (80 AFUE) than to replace the heat exchanger, and having a two-stage system would even out the temperature swings. And there’d be no plumbing problems.

He also said that the static pressure in the system was high – adding another return would help that. And it would increase airflow, which is an issue in part of the house.

I was hoping for a simple repair, but it seems unlikely. I’m going get a second opinion before we do anything, of course.

I’m very glad my Toastmasters meeting this morning was on Zoom and not in person, even though it meant my speech for the “Effective Body Language” project was less effective than I’d’ve liked. We had sixteen attendees. Two of them had had the worst headaches of their lives this week. One of them was Covid-positive, and the other was waiting for PCR test results; we also had at least one member who was unable to attend due to a sudden health issue.

After the meeting, we took our usual walks, and then I tackled the Traeger grill. Replacing the fire pot was easy after I watched the videos on this page; the igniter looked like it was in good shape, so I plugged everything back in and fired it up. My infrared thermometer showed the igniter heating up well over 250F within just a couple of minutes, so I added pellets – and nothing happened.

So I took it apart again to replace the igniter. The official instructions tell you to remove the control panel and the pellet hopper, but the unofficial video I watched suggested taping the wires of the new rod to the old one and using the old one to fish the wires through the holes as you remove it. I couldn’t make that work, so I followed the official instructions and removed the hopper – it took less time than I’d spent trying the other method. And it let me vacuum out a ton of pellet dust from otherwise-inaccessible areas, too.

Finally, I buttoned it all up again and turned it on; this time, the igniter got up over 500F, so I put in the pellets and let it rip. A couple of minutes later, I had fire in the hole!

Not only did today have fire, it had ice. Well, Björk liqueur from Iceland – we’d bought a tiny bottle from the duty-free shop at the Reykjavik airport on our way home, and we decided to have it tonight. It’s made from birch syrup and sugar (and alcohol!); we were surprised to discover a little birch twig in the bottle, too.

It was odd and rather sweet. I’m glad we only bought a 5cl bottle. It’s not the last Icelandic delicacy left from the trip – we still have a few chocolate discs, which are pretty good (even if they are milk chocolate). And Cost Plus had some Icelandic chocolate bars the last time I looked, but that was a few months ago. We may just have to plan another trip!