When I first raised the thermostat setting in the fall, the gas furnace started up without any problem.
However, there was a musty aroma & quite a bit of dust coming from the vents.
I hoped that these problems were caused by resting idle from mid May until the end of October, then unluckyly, this past Wintertide was especially brutal. The two of us experienced temperatures down to setback twenty-5 degrees. The conditions were well below chilly for weeks at a time, & the wind chill made the air feel even colder. The gas furnace seemed to run all the time. I adjusted the thermostat setting a few degrees higher multiple times, because the current home felt chilly. The gas furnace simply couldn’t keep up with demand. My biweekly bills were huge. I should have realized that these were all warning signs of a problem with the gas furnace. Instead, I totally ignored the troubles until the gas furnace quit completely. It failed while in the middle of the night, when the weather was so cold there was no way every one of us could get by without heat. I sad about the water pipes chilly & bursting. I had no option but to pay extra for emergency gas furnace repair. The serviceman who fixed the gas furnace told me that the malfunction was really caused by a buildup of dust within the mechanism. She said that seasonal service would have prevented the need for the super extravagant service call. She also told me that I was really lucky the failure of the gas furnace hadn’t resulted in a crack in the heat exchanger. Because I’d neglected annual tune-ups, the warranty didn’t cover the cost of parts or labor.