Gas Furnace out on a Sunday

[Jason Munck]

Just got a call from my tenant saying the gas furnace isn't working. If I can't get a repairman out there today (it's Sunday) and they have to go a whole day without heat, what do you do? Tell them to suck it up or stay someplace else for the night?

I'm sure there are a ton of people that have been in this situation before and I would love to hear how you navigate this issue.

[Steve Babiak]

First you have to understand how your heating system works; that may or may not be within your skill set, but that's where you start.

With gas heat, there has to be some sort if ignition. If it has a pilot for ignition, then you can check whether re-lighting the pilot gets it going. The pilot fuel supply/flame size might have to be turned up. The pilot might not stay lit - usually due to a failed thermocouple (a replacement thermocouple is about $10 at the big box hardware stores and it is easy DIY). If electronic ignition, then you have the possibility of a failed glow bar. Circuit breakers and the emergency switch sometimes end up in the off position (also possible for systems with a pilot flame). Sometimes the failure has nothing to do with any components within the heating system itself; I had a failure caused by an empty plastic grocery bag getting sucked into the opening on the air intake on a furnace on a windy day - no air for combustion causes unit to not fire up. And then the newer electronic systems might have trouble-shooting indicator lights that help to diagnose the problem.

Understanding how it works and some simple trouble-shooting techniques will help you determine whether the outage will be just a few hours or a few days; if not short you would then work with the tenant to see whether they need some electric space heaters or not (some already have their own).