Friday, March 11, 2011

The Great Furnace Search

When we moved in 3 years ago, I noticed a service sticker on the large metal box in the basement which was dated 1978.  It still works, but I have to assume that there have been some advances in heating and cooling since Trudeau was prime minister.  For this and other reasons too boring to get into, Adam and I have decided to upgrade our furnace and air conditioner.

So anyway, we had four companies come in to do an estimate.  That means four different people came into our home, looked at our furnace, pitched, told us that we had to act quickly to take advantage of government rebates, and left.  Noone seemed excessively slimey, or gave us wildly exorbitant prices.

I started to write a more detailed account of each visit, but the result was too tedious for words.  I sucked too much of our time on this endeavour, and I don't want to waste yours.   One would say that their products were the best, and another would say that all furnaces are the same and it's the installation that matters.  One would talk more about warranties and another would blather on about how long they'd been in business. 

In the end it was between two companies that we got a good feeling about (but who really knows). Anyway, they seemed like upstanding citizens and they both sold furnaces with fancy controls.  So we got them in and forced them to fight to the death.  It was hard work setting up the arena in the back yard, what with all the snow and mud.  Also finding a company that sells lirpas wasn't easy, but with such a big purchase we felt it was important to do our due diligence. One of the furnace salesmen injected himself with a trioxide compound to fake his own death.  I don't know why he did that, but it was good for us because nobody really died and there was no need to explain to the cops why there was corpse with a lirpa sticking out of his chest in our backyard. 

Anyway, the victor is coming in at 9 am tomorrow to begin the furnacing process.

2 comments:

Cara said...

Does getting a new furnace mean getting new ducts too? Always wondered that.

Super Happy Jen said...

Nope. Just a furnace. We probably need new coolant lines for the AC though.

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