the furnace.

[solipsistnation]

The valve that keeps it automatically filled with water when the automatic air-bleed valve lets air out was broken. The furnace guy replace a bunch of fiddly pipe bits and refilled the system with water.

Then he said the magic words: "That's all under contract, so you're all set." Yay!

Comments

[whispercricket]

What sort of contract is this? It sounds wonderful.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Ah ha.

If you continue to use oil heat, you will want to set up an oil delivery contract. Basically, they estimate how much your oil will cost for the entire year (including the cheaper Summer months and the more expensive Winter months), divide that by 12, and bill you for that monthly. They then use some kind of complex computer program thingy to determine when you're likely to need oil and automatically dispatch oil deliveries to your house. In the two years we've been here, I've only needed to call for emergency deliveries twice, I think, and those were during the bitter cold months last winter.

Usually with this kind of contract, they set up a service contract as well. Depending on the company and the contract, you may have different levels of support. Ours covers furnace parts and everything up to (and maybe including) a pipe breaking. In this case, two valves were broken, and he replaced them for free. They also do a yearly inspection to make sure everything is working okay, although if they do it in, say, the summer, it may be more difficult to determine whether anything is actually wrong.

Anyway, we use Petro, so you may wish to contact them. I've been quite happy with their service (we called about the furnace this morning, and the guy came today) so far.

[meranthi.livejournal.com]

And the key thing is that you have to set it up EARLY... :}

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

At least around my neck of the woods, the gas supplier will do this too (since I have gas central heating). It's also useful if you don't have a tame qualified maintenance man you can call on.

[profesor.livejournal.com]

Glad it's fixed! Hopefully if your air bleed valve works well, you won't need to know about bleeding the system anyways.