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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: October 4th, 2023

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  • I remember this cause I was living in a place where gas topped $5 a gallon. The federal minimum wage was $5.85 for the first half of that year. Basically my first and last hour of work was really just paying the gas to get to/from work. Running $5 through an inflation calc and that would be about $7.59 today.

    My parents bought a Lincoln Navigator during that time…🤯 The dealer understandably was super motivated to get rid of it. It gets ~12 mpg around town. A bit after those price hikes they started pumping oil like crazy though and prices hit rock bottom around $1.60 though. That likely caused the mass purchasing of giant SUV’s again.




  • Just as a clarifying point(I’m sure some HVAC person can correct me). The fan spins up to make a draft, the pressure sensor is detecting negative pressure(vacuum) and that successful check allows the gas valve to open prior to the igniter/flame sensor. The draft helps pull the gas into the combustion chamber and not just leak it out into the basement or wherever(especially if it fails to ignite). Furnaces kicking on are a series of do an action, verify that action happened, repeat until it gets through its todo list. High efficiency furnaces work similarly but also different…

    Knowing the general boot up can help figure out what isn’t working. Igniter never goes off?…pressure sensor is right before it. Furnace ignites but shuts off a few seconds later…Flame sensor didn’t report success.

    I keep a pressure sensor, igniter, and flame sensor sitting next to my furnace. It’s like ~$50 for the OEM parts and I can generally fix my furnace in 5-10 minutes.