A thought on Troubleshooting

Recently I've had some issues with my furnace. Now normally I call my brother immediately because frankly he knows more about furnaces than I do and that's our arrangement (I fix his electronic/computer related issues he fixes my mechanical ones). However he is currently out of the area for work. I still called him to see if he had anything immediate but since he was not some place he could look he had to wait to research it. So I figured I would screw around with my furnace. Now I'm very comfortable with electricity so I was pretty safe shutting down the furnace breaker and poking around in there. Also I had the manual for the furnace so I was looking at it's wiring schematic and found there was a relay that turned the system on and off. Also the thermostat was wired to the wrong spots in the furnace. I fixed the thermostat and called off my brother until I could determine if that was the issue. It wasn't.

So back to texting my brother. However in the meantime the furnace turned on and wouldn't turn off. So I disconnected one of the relay terminals and that seemed to turn off the furnace leading me to believe it was bad relay. My brother called me shortly after to tell me the things that could cause the issue, including the relay. So my suspicions confirmed I bought a new one. All is good so far.

However the reason for this story which is irrelevant to most people is that given the courage to do so, someone with a little bit of knowledge about how things work can troubleshoot what is wrong with them. You just need to have the courage to try. If I had the confidence in fixing my furnace before I started this adventure I would have certainly have spent more time trying to debug it and figured it out eventually. Mind you my brother confirmed it and I'm a lot more happy having a knowledgable and skilled person telling me what's wrong with something, but I can troubleshoot things I don't completely understand which is pretty awesome.

So unless it's dangerous or you're not comfortable troubleshooting something. The next time something quits working trying working your way backward, maybe you'll figure it out and get the rewarding feeling about having fixed it yourself. However if you can't figure it out or it's dangerous call someone who knows what they're doing. We can't know everything.