We Bought a House 11/4

By Christopher Miller

When there’s something wrong, in the neighborhood, who ya’ gonna’ call?

Well…there aren’t many people (awake) that you can reach out to at 2am. This was the case in the wee-hours of Saturday morning, mischief night as they call it, on the day before Halloween.

An unfamiliar burning smell woke us up around 12:30 Saturday morning. As any homeowner who uses gas or oil for their heat source knows – any weird burning smells are not welcomed, especially just after midnight.

I got out of bed to investigate the odor and found that it was very strong and coming primarily from the basement and our oil furnace. It was so bad that my wife and I could not spend more than a few minutes in the basement at a time due to the odor. And let me take the time to mention right now too – all of the smoke detectors in our home are brand new and monitor for Carbon Monoxide as well.

After some short and concerned conversations with my wife, she called her parents to help troubleshoot by phone the possible issues. I grew a bit restless to get instant answers on “to evacuate or not” during their phone call and I proceeded to call County Communications to dispatch our local fire department out to investigate the issue, knowing that they have more advanced tools and meters that can “sniff” for odors.

Around 2am the fine gentlemen of Dunnstown Fire Company pulled up to the house and walked through the first floor to the basement. They too smelled the odor and could not put their finger on it; theorizing that it was some sort of burning glue or adhesive. Even their sniffer device could not pick out just what the weird burning smell was!

During this time the furnace had been shut off at the breaker and turned down at the thermostat and we opened windows and doors to begin venting the house. After trying to settle down to bed on the couch, I called an after hours HVAC company to come out and see if they can pinpoint the odor and its cause.

Around 9:30am a technician from Ingram’s came out to the house, instantly solved the issue and gave me a grocery list of items needed to make the repairs myself (a GOD-SEND for a homeowner who doesn’t have a spare million dollars laying around for a new furnace, and one who loves to try to solve his own problems).

It was vital to us to get this problem figured out and corrected in adequate time not only because of the colder night temperatures, but because my family was already on the road from the Allentown area to spend the weekend with us and unbeknownst to them – help make HVAC repairs!

After a quick lunch at Haywood’s on the Green we went to the home improvement store to make our purchases…a 24″ length of galvanized flue pipe, furnace cement to seal the pipe to the chimney, “real” duct tape, and metal strapping to secure the fallen-off chimney cleanout door to the chimney.

The old chimney flue pipe had 2 dampers on it – one was completely sealed in tape, and the other was still functional. We corrected the issue by removing the end of the pipe with the non-functional damper and replacing it with a straight pipe that fed into the chimney to vent the furnace gases. We then used a putty knife to spread a thick amount of “furnace cement” around the pipe/chimney opening to seal it from letting the gas back into the basement and being sucked into the blower (the home is heated by forced hot air).

Metal strapping was screwed into the chimney to secure the cleanout door that had since fallen off and was laying on the floor. New chimney doors are upwards of $40 and would need to be specially ordered from Lowe’s, at least.

It was then that we made a mistake that thankfully we were able to solve the next day – we used the wrong kind of furnace-grade duct tape to seal the seams of the new pipe to the old and the old pipe to the flue coming out of the furnace.

The next day, Sunday, if you are keeping track, my parents went to Lowe’s to track down the correct high heat foil tape while my wife and I scraped the melted duct tape off of the pipe and seams in the basement. Thankfully it was only melted on for about 12 hours but still – it melted under the high heat of what comes out of the furnace into the chimney!

In all the project cost us 1 sleepless night, $60 in supplies, a day’s worth of doing alternative projects outside, and a basic knowledge on how the furnace vents and making minor repairs to something that the average freaked out homeowner would think could cost them…a brand new furnace.

So if you end up having a strange scent coming from your furnace and your smoke detectors do not pick it up, do not hesitate to call your local fire department for assistance! They even wiped their feet before entering our home, a fact that my wife is still gladdened by.

And a shout out to the Communications Center and Dunnstown Fire Company – even at 2am, you guys rock! And to my wife and father – you rock at scraping old tape and sealing seams!

On to the next project…