I noticed some issues with my furnace when I first started it up in the fall.
The smell of burnt hair was very unpleasant.
There was also a significant amount of dust flowing from the vents. I assumed that these concerns were caused by the system sitting idle for almost six months. Because the weather changed very quickly, I got busy and forgot about my complaints with the heating system. I needed to find the snow shovels and ice scrapers, buy rock salt and schedule plowing for the driveway. I hauled all of my family’s winter gear down from the attic and bought the kids new snow boots. The pool pump required winterizing and I put away all of the lawn furniture and barbecue grill. I checked that all of the windows were shut tight and caulked where necessary. The winter season was especially long and brutal this year. Not only did I switch to heating mode and raise the thermostat setting at the end of September, we had blizzard conditions at Halloween. In early December, the outdoor temperature dropped down to negative twenty-five degrees and we accumulated over a foot of snow overnight. That’s when the furnace quit completely. In the middle of the night, I woke up to a freezing cold house. I tried changing the batteries in the thermostat and replacing the air filter in the furnace. I pushed the reset button and checked the breakers in the electric panel. Nothing fixed the problem. I was worried about the water pipes freezing. I had no choice but to call for emergency furnace repair. The overtime service cost me a fortune. The technician who handled the repair told me that the failure was caused by a lack of maintenance. Dust had built up within the system and led to it overheating.