Ma’am, I think I found the trouble…

So the HVAC folks were here again this week, trying to figure out the source of a really annoying banging and clattering in my new furnace (think “Thompson submachine gun trying to hit a 747 as it revvs up for takeoff” and you just about have the right decibel level).

This furnace diagnoses itself, and that was the problem–everything checked out perfectly. The noise only happens two or three times in a 24-hour period, and naturally the repair guys were never here at the right moment. So I was reduced to re-enacting the scene of the crime in minute detail.

“Well, about 3:00 in the afternoon I’m always freezing in the office, don’t know why, but I am. It says 70 degrees on the thermostat but it feels like 60. So I usually turn up the heat to 74 degrees for a couple of hours to try and get warm. That’s when that noise happens.”

Turned out the noise was due to air in the line of the condensation pump, not the furnace, and they’re going to fix that. But on the way out the repairman went into my office to see if perhaps the vent was blocked. I heard a guffaw.

“Ma’am? I think I know why you’re cold,” he grinned, and pointed to the vent:

So the cat’s toasty belly is the reason mine isn’t. Short of putting a barbed wire fence around the vent, however, I’m not sure we’re going to solve this one.

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