The other morning we woke up to the sound of the motor that runs the fan on our furnace seizing...and then not working at all.


This is the second time that this has happened to us this winter. The first time it happened Tyler and I came home to the smell of burning plastic. We eventually realized the smell was caused by vinyl floor burning around a vent that was piping hot since the heat around it wasn't actually being circulated. We turned off the heat and called the local electrician. He installed a used motor which he thought was in good enough condition to last us the winter but said if anything goes wrong he would install a new one and not charge us any labour fee (we had requested he install a new motor). Well, it's -30 outside and we've once again had to turn off our heat and guess what? The Bruno electrician is on vacation in Hawaii. We made several frantic calls and found a place in Humboldt that had the right motor in stock. We assumed we would also have to get someone to drive in from there to install it. The first guy we talked to was snowed in, another wasn't able to come till next week. Finally we found out that there was a second electrician living in Bruno! He agreed to come over immediately and we were able to turn our heat back on by 3pm. Phew! At least the whole furnace didn't go (it is from 1959 after all).