Back in the summer of 2008, I noticed that despite having my Central Air on and running, my house wouldn't get much cooler. I also noticed a rather large leak coming from the unit. While most people would think the worst, I basically just ignored it and decided that it was being caused by me not having a working humidifier (which hasn't worked for about 5 years now!).Turns out I was wrong.
In all actuality, the blower, the piece of equipment in your furnace and Central Air that blows air through the house, was dead, the motor shot to hell. I hadn't replaced the air filter in the furnace for over a year, and I was now stuck paying the price. The furnace in my house is at least 20 years old, so I knew getting a new motor wouldn't be cheap at all. Worst of all, it was early October and my house gets real cold real fast (insulation here is bad, though I'm not sure as to why).
So I had to buckle down and call a Central Air guy to come out and fix it. Try telling your friends about this, especially if they don't own a house! "Man, I can't believe the motor in my central air is broken!" "Well, thank god it's winter, so you don't need it until summer!" "No, I need it now, it pumps warm air through my house during the winter." The repair cost me nearly $400, and I was actually lucky since the guy didn't have to do a lot of work and lived right around the corner.
"So why did this thing break down? Was it old age?"
"No, you forgot to put in a new air filter, so it got clogged and died."
That's the long and short of it. If you have a furnace, central air, etc... make sure you change the filter AT LEAST once every 3 months, if not once a month. My problem is that there aren't a lot of places to buy a new air filter for a furnace so it's hard and difficult to do. I finally bought some today. They wound up costing $4 a piece since those were the only ones in the size I needed, but they tend to last long and do a great job.
Hey, I'd rather pay $4 now for a filter than $400 to get my furnace fixed again!
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