The Fuse

About 9 one evening our restful near slumber repose was shattered. All at once a crashing sound was heard. I yelled to Doug to see what he was doing. He yelled to me to find out what I had been doing. Getting no answers we both got up and began to look around to find out what had happened. I looked at the back porch to see if the "puddle duck" that Doug is making had shifted or fallen. I also checked the back yard but saw nothing. I checked the side yard with the basement window wells and everything seemed alright. Doug began checking the garage for anything amiss. He also looked out front. After having found nothing we both shrugged our shoulders and returned to what we were doing.




After a few minutes, I remembered that when we very first looked at the house someone else had a contract on it. But during their inspection they found a cracked truss and had to have it repaired. Eventually they bailed out on the house and that is when we were able to get it. Anyway, back to the story at hand. I had a thought that maybe the repaired truss hadn't been repaired so well after all. I headed back to mention my thought to Doug. But I guess Doug had had a thought similar to that just moments before I did.


I found our ladder in the laundry room and Doug up in the recesses of our attic. I climbed up the ladder to see what was the matter (ha, ha, I rhymed). He had discovered that a metal cover to the air handler in the attic had fallen off. Whew, what a relief. A small fix that he could surely have resolved quickly. And sure enough after a few minutes he had it fixed and came back down.




After all that work in the attic I guess he was hot. So he went to the thermostat to get things a little cooler in the house. When to his utter astonishment there was no display in the thermostat! Something was wrong! Very wrong!


Back up into the attic he went. He removed the metal cover to the air handler and took a look. He was trying to figure out what had gone wrong. He found a schematic on the back of the cover and brought it down so he could take a good look at it. But what he really wanted to do was find the fuse and see if that was the problem. He went back up and took a good look at the wiring that was exposed and indeed found a tiny fuse that he removed with surgeon-like care with some needlenose pliers.


When he got out of the attic and into the house he discovered a little black on the fuse and was pretty sure that was the problem. Now with that problem diagnosed we had another problem. It was now 10 at night and we would be hot if we couldn't get it fixed tonight. But any electronic type stores were closed for the night. Rats! His mind was doing all sorts of acrobats trying to figure out a solution to the problem - when he had a flash of brilliance. There was an auto parts store that was opened pretty late! They might have that type of fuse. He bolted to the car.

Before long he was home with one of these.

He took the precious purple fuse and headed once again to the attic. With just as much care with which he removed the faulty fuse he inserted the new one. Voila! Success! The thermostat once again was fulfilling its purpose in life - keeping us cool.

I think Doug saved us about a bazillion dollars on repair bills by figuring out this problem and being able to fix it himself.

He's a great handyman!

And the best news yet - his fix cost about $2.00.

Plus we have 4 more fuses to use later.

That means this fix cost about 40 cents!

Beat that one

Parker and Sons

and

DeWitt Equipment Company

for that matter.