I'll tell you a short story about my furnace.
It fucked up. Pipe burst, small explosion, the whole deal.
So a new furnace, and they're talking $5,000 to $10,000 depending on the model I chose.
I fixed computers for a living.
So I hired a repairman to repair my furnace.
$500 for a new radiator. $50 for a new control unit. $249 for a brand new blower motor.
$750 for labor - including all of the plumbing, etc, and I paid cash / so the price to me was "tax included."
All told it came out about $1800 or so. The furnace was basically fully rebuilt with all brand new components except for what could be salvaged. The working conditions were difficult - and there was a long wait time for the radiator because we had to ship that up from Iowa or something.
Fucking around - but in the end the system worked better than it did when I first found it. Fully refurbished, and at 1/5th the price. What do I care? It's in the closet and it now works again. That's all I care about it.
Great story. Thank you.
Now I am compelled to tell you about my uncle. He heated his house in cold, cold NJ with a cast iron boiler until the fucking thing actually broke in half. Useless. I have no idea how he got rid of the old one. I have no idea where he found another boiler to replace it. But one day, there was a flatbed with a 2 ton boiler there. Me, my brothers and his kids, my cousins, were all willing to help move this monster from the flatbed to the cellar.
My uncle just smiled at us and shoo'd us off. Go hunting or fishing or picking apples from the nearby abandoned orchard. We all came back a few hours later and that 2 ton monster was installed in the basement of my uncles house. To this day, I have no idea how he did it. "How did you do that?" He just smiled at us.
Like that Latvian that built the Coral Castle in Homestead, Florida, he took his secret to the grave.
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