Repair Sunday

Today dawned cold and windy. The dusting of snow we received last evening still lay on the ground. We have been babysitting The Son all weekend and I took him back to his place so he could shower and clean up. His heat was not working and hasn't for a few days. Because he owns a condo, the other units helped keep his unit from freezing up. The temperature was right at 60 when we arrived. As any one who knows me and especially my family, I have no do it yourself skills at all. Still I did a few basic checks on his heating system. I checked that he still had gas coming into his unit by turning on one of his stove burners. He had gas. The fan in his heating system wouldn't come on so I thought maybe a circuit breaker was tripped. Nope. While The Son showered, I looked at the outside unit. Of course I had no idea what I was really looking for. I pulled off the access panel and the diagram on the backside of the panel didn't match anything I was looking at so I put it back on and the unit started - for about 10 seconds before shutting off. Hmmm. My uncle has experience with such matters so Ann gave him a call and woke him up. Ooops. But he was nice about it and came right up. While I was waiting for my Uncle to arrive, I went and looked at the outside until again. It sits in a utility closet off The Son's balcony. I took of the access panel looked around like I knew something, which I clearly I did not and put the panel back on making sure the access panel was seated firmly and correctly giving it a smack to seat it firmly. The unit started right up. Figures. I didn't call my Uncle off, but let him arrive and assess the situation. His explanation was that its a safety feature that if the panel is off, the unit won't run. Obviously the panel while on wasn't on correctly. Lesson learned. Since we had dragged him up we also had him look at the light in The Son's closet, which hasn't worked in a while. He determined the switch in the light fixture (it was string pull) was bad and we needed a new fixture. We headed off to Home Depot and procured the necessary hardware. My uncle had it up and working in no time. It's nice having relatives with some talent. For helping us out, I took him and his wife out to lunch along with Ann and The Son.. The rest of the day was spent laying around watching football and waiting for the Washington - Baltimore game tonight. The game isn't even 6 minutes old and the Redskins are already down by 14. I could be turning in early tonight.