Frozen Fingers, YouTube Fixes, and Facing the Furnace

We’re ten days in now. Ten days with a furnace that won’t stay lit.
Ten days of scrambling for parts, patching things with makeshift heat, and trying to think straight with frozen fingers.

But today… we tried something different.
We decided to fix it ourselves.

We knew the issue wasn’t propane, or wiring, or the switch that kept tripping. We knew that part like the back of our frostbitten hands by now. No — the problem seemed mechanical: a fan, loose and rattling.

So we bundled up and went in.
Outdoors. In -18°C. With bare hands that had maybe two minutes of function before the cold turned them to stone.

Sandy managed to get deep into the unit — tight space, poor visibility, frigid air — and sure enough, the back end of the squirrel cage fan looked like the culprit. Loose. Unbalanced. Ready to trip again.

We’d watched YouTube videos. Read forums. Held on to the slim hope that it could be tightened without pulling the whole thing apart.

But… no.
Not this time.

So we called it: we’re buying the motor.
It’s not cheap.
It’s not fast.
But it’s the only path forward.

And we’ll install it ourselves. Because there’s no cavalry coming.


—

The silver lining?
The temperature’s supposed to rise by 15°C tomorrow. And honestly, if I never have to feel my breath freeze in my nose again, it’ll be too soon.

But we’re still here. Still troubleshooting. Still trusting that the end to this cold chapter is coming.

We’ll make it.
Not because it’s easy — but because we’re stubborn enough to stay.

This post is related to the following YouTube video: