Merry Christmas from the House

As much as home ownership is the American dream, the past few years of underwater mortgages have shown that the dream may be somewhat flawed.  Not only that, once you put a down payment on a house and sign your mortgage agreement, the house begins to be one money sucking adventure after another. This year, for Christmas, our house gave us a broken heater.  Of course, the service plan that I bought last summer when the air conditioner went out really paid off (not!).  Because of the service plan, we would only have to wait 3 days for our "priority appointment". Together with the reduced price of $175 for the first 30 minutes, I just knew that I got a great deal. (Just in case you weren't catching it, that was sarcasm). Once the service person had made the evaluation, they would give us an estimate of the repair costs.  After a day of shivering, the Hubster started making comments about what he thought the problem might be.  Not to be outdone, I put my research skills to good use and discovered that one of the most common causes of gas heater failures is a dirty flame sensor. Even better, I found out that this was a problem that any moron with a wrench could probably fix. So after I watched a few videos and read lots of instructions from various sites, the Hubster set to work.  Within a few moments, he had the sensor cleaned and reinstalled. It actually took more time to find the correct wrench than it did to fix the problem.  Once everything was put back in place, we flipped the switch and held our breath.  The heater cycled on, the flames lit and stayed on, and once again the heater was doing what heaters are supposed to do.  Once again, we learned that doing a bit of research can save a lot of money.  The only question left to answer is what will the house give us next?

The Hubster's engineering degrees are finally coming in handy.