The Wages of Furnace Neglect

I just finished paying what turns out to be a very reasonable $300 to get our furnace repaired. It stopped working a few days ago, and fortunately our fireplace with his heat fan system has kept our house plenty warm during these cold December days. We were planning to head out to Salt Lake City to spend Christmas with my family but without a working furnace we would be running the risk of having our house get so cold in our absence that the pipes would freeze and break and we'd have a much more expensive and exasperating mess on our hands when we returned. Would a broken furnace ruin Christmas for the Cannons?

After several failed attempts to fix the problem myself, including several calls to do-it-yourself gurus in the ward, I decided to go call in a professional. After about 90 minutes he had our heat working again and Christmas was saved, though the $300 bill certainly wasn't how I wanted to spend my Christmas bonuses. Such is life.

My point in writing this is to educate all of you mostly young homeowners who may not understand the importance of changing your furnace air filters regularly. I certainly didn't think it was a big deal as I have only changed the filters three times in the last 4 years. When our furnace went out I removed our filter and it was caked with about 1/4" layer of solid lint, dust, and dirt over every square inch. So I just took it out thinking, "The only reason you really need filters is to keep dust and dirt from blowing out of your vents into your house." WRONG.

According to the repair man here is what your air filters do:

1. If you don't have an air filter in place, all of the dirt and dust blowing around in your vents will build up in your furnace fan (a $500+ replacement) and your AC cooling coils (I don't know how much it costs to replace that, but he said cleaning them is a pain in the neck) which will then freeze up and become damaged because of the lack of proper circulation. Conclusion: You need air filters to protect your circulation fan ($500) and air conditioning cooling coils (more than $500 probably).

2. If you have an air filter and don't replace it regularly (every 3-6 months), the air flow is blocked and too much heat starts to build up in the heating area of the furnace. This can damage any number of components, including the temperature regulator which is what burned out on ours. It is a little "U" shaped metal piece wrapped in yellow rubber, and the yellow rubber on our was scorched! He said it kicks itself off when it gets over 210 degrees to keep the furnace from burning itself out. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time between "cool downs" for it to cool down enough that the cumulative heat build up from the blocked air flow of our gunky filter burned the thing to a crisp and so it stopped sending the signal to the computer to turn on the heating unit. The fan still worked, but our ignition unit wouldn't respond because the piece that tells it to turn on was kaput. That replacement piece costs $220 (plus $80 diagnostic/labor).

Very fortunately for us, that was the only thing that got damaged (it appears), because he pointed out a bunch of other parts that make up a working furnace and it seemed like they all cost over $500. But don't worry, the cost for a completely new furnace installed is about $3000.

So now you know, as I do, that a gunky filter can cost you at least $300 or at most $3000+, which are both much, much more than a $10-$20 filter every 3-6 months. There you have it folks: Replace those filters!