Most of you who know us have heard of the horrific experience we had with mold in our house and the arbitration settlement with Town and Country Homes where the arbitrating judge ruled that the mold (which covered half of the floor joists in our basement) was caused by faulty construction, but that because Town and Country’s warranty document didn’t explicitly cover mold, T&C was not liable for covering the cleanup costs, leaving us with a clean up bill in the neighborhood of $18,000. I hope everyone reads that part – they caused it, but we paid for it literally. Yes, I’m still bitter.
The furnace was the next thing we had to deal with. Within 2 years our furnace motor went kaput. I replaced it myself voiding any warranty on the motor, but saving myself around $200 in labor and it’s worked fine since. My neighbor who is a plumber took the motor and blasted it with an air compressor, and you should have seen the small chunchs of drywall and all the dust that came out. This appeared to be another casualty of the construction process.
Recently, however, every time the fan runs, there’s extremely loud noise coming from the motor/squirrel cage assembly that sounds like grinding metal. It’s loud enough where we have to turn the volume up on the tv another 10dB. Very annoying. So today I decided to take it apart again and see if I could find what was making all the noise. Thought it might be something loose, metal on metal vibrating or something. After pulling the squirrel cage out and tightening the screws that hold the motor to the casing, I tested it. Here’s where the fun starts…remember, I manage software developers. I can do some handy work, but am no professional. In order to get the cage out, I had to unhook the capacitor that gets the fan past the low gear torque. After pulling off the wires, I forgot them and let them hang resting on the cage…which is all metal. I flipped on the power switch and hit the door switch (that stops the furnace when the bottom door is off). Right hand holding the cage. Left hand on the metal furnace casing. As the motor started to spin, a large amount of voltage proceeded to pass from the capacitor wires into the cage, into one hand, through my chest, and out the other hand. This wasn’t a real pleasant experience as you can imagine. I let out a bit of a yell and was thrown backwards luckily so that was disconnected from the circuit. In the process of getting electrocuted, the combination of the way my right arm was extended and the forcible contraction of every muscle located between my two hands caused my right shoulder to sublux. This happened many times when I played football in high school and college, so I’m familiar with it. Looking back on it, I would have loved to have been video taping it. Knowing I’m not seriously injured, I bet it looked hilarious.
I ended up tinkering with it for a while longer after recovering my wits, but couldn’t figure out the cause of the noise. At this point, I’ve conceded to calling a professional and letting them to their job. At some point, the money saved doing something yourself isn’t worth the risk, trouble, and frustration of trying to do it yourself.
After getting the furnace fixed (the fan blower was trashed) I had pain in my shoulder for s out 2 weeks before I decided to go see the doctor. Usually the pain goes away the next day. Turns out the the way my shoulder was wrenched caused a mild sprain. It’ not bad enough for an x-ray, but the doctor figures I probably tore some muscle fibers. He prescribed advil and rotator cuff exercises. Sometimes it’s best to just let the pros do the jobs that they’re paid to do.
