The Furnace, Part 1

With the roof appearing to be in good working order, my attention turns to the next item of business: the gas furnace. 

In my initial inspection of the house, the furnace had no problems igniting, but there was some fan trouble.  Since PG&E was scheduled to drop by the next day to turn my gas back on, I figured it would be a good time to get the furnace trouble fixed.  Since the blower motor had supposedly been the source of trouble, I removed the blower motor and established that it was in good working order.  I also took the opportunity to replace the sorely-neglected filter. 

Next, I turned on the thermostat to see what would happen.  To my suprise, smoke started coming out of the thermostat.  Not good, to say the least.  I disconnected the blown thermostat, and manually connected the terminals to test operation.  Things seemed okay, so I rushed off to Home Depot to pick up a replacement thermostat, which took all of 10 minutes to install.  Everything is looking good, right?  Wrong.

The next day, PG&E shows up.  On the bright side, I have hot water again.  On the downside, the furnace failed to ignite.  Initially it looked like the furnace was trying to ignite, but then something gave up the ghost and no more clicking could be heard.  The symptoms changed to the fan running and not much else going on, which I eventually tracked down to a dead transformer.  A dying transformer could have accidentally delivered 120 volts to my old thermostat, which could explain the frying.  The transformer supplies 24 volts for the control board and thermostat.

At any rate, a tour through the local hardware stores failed to locate a replacement, so I had to resort to ordering one online.  To be continued when the postal gods smile upon me...