Do THIS To Your Furnace Before October 1st

Some morning in the next two weeks you will turn your thermostat up for the first time since April, and your house will smell like a toaster somebody forgot about. That smell is fine. Two other smells are not, and the gas that kills people in their beds every winter does not smell like anything at all. I was the janitor at one public school for forty years, head custodian on the paperwork, and every fall I was the one who lit that boiler first. I never worked on a house furnace for money. What I learned was what you check before you let a fire start in a building full of children. Here is my September thirtieth, in order. First, read the label on the front of your furnace. It tells you what must not be stored near it, and then look at the laundry corner right beside it. The manufacturers name bleach, detergent, dryer sheets and water softener salt in their own manuals as things that corrode the steel inside. Second, hold your filter up to a window. Which way the arrow points, and why a clogged filter makes a furnace run all night and never quite warm the house. Third, which first-day smell is dust, which one means shut it down, and which one means get out of the house. Fourth, turn your carbon monoxide alarm over and read the date on the back. The test button proves the horn and the battery. It does not prove the sensor still works. Fifth, the silver plate inside your furnace door, the one sentence to say to your service man, and the warranty paper in your drawer that may have cost you five years of coverage. There is also a confession in here, about what I kept stacked against that boiler for thirteen winters and what the burner man found. #HomeMaintenance #FurnaceMaintenance #MrBarlow