Following the logic on this board, I need to report a Y2K bug that hit our heating system yesterday. At some point yesterday our heating system in our home stopped working. The blower would come on but the heat wouldn't. For some unknown reason, it started to work again today. I swear I didn't change any settings, hit or move anything. I had tried turning it on and off a number of times last night and today, but it still didn't work. After 10 this morning I tried turning it on one more time and it suddenly worked. ???

Now this must have been a Y2K failure for the following reasons. 1) I called the company that installed it and they said they didn't have any idea what the problem could be. I suggested it might be a Y2K glitch, and the guy just laughed and said probably not. According to the logic on this board, this denial is solid proof it must have been Y2K related. 2) It happened after 1-01-2000, thus according to the "logic on this board" (c), it is almost surely a Y2K problem. 3) the heating system has IC's on it, thus it must have embedded programming. Thus it must have been a Y2K failure. And finally 4) the most convincing argument is the fact that I don't have any real idea what caused it, the guys at the repair place say they have no idea either, and the heater manufacturer has made _NO_ announcements that this failure was _NOT_ Y2K related.

So beware. All your heating systems are going to start failing any day now, if they haven't already. But they will probably work again after 24 hours, so don't sweat it too much.

The bummer is that this is a new heating system that replaced one that failed just a few days before 1-1-99. Geez. I bet that was probably a holdover Y1K failure. I should have sued...

-- Fred Bryce (fredbryce@hotmail.com), January 08, 2000

Answers

::sigh::

-- Lisa (lisadawn@yahoo.com), January 08, 2000.

I had a similar experience in December:

My heat pump had a circuit board fry. The chip that controlled the defrost by counting the elaspsed minutes of use before reversing the flow failed and the unit froze up literally about 1" of ice. Air came out of the ducts in the house but no heat.

Serviceman replaced the board and it has worked fine ever since.

I do not believe this is a Y2K problem. If you have a heat pump and your system fails again you may want to check the defrost controller.

-- Bill P (porterwn@one.net), January 08, 2000.

Fred,

You failed to mention whether your furnace uses electricity, gas, propane, etc...could be your non-compliant fuel ole buddy! I've run across some non compliant logs that don't want to burn in my stove. No choice but to toss them aside and look for compliant ones. The guy I bought my wood from told me it was all compliant, but I knew dern good and well he couldn't have tested every log. Lying scumbag! And the media still says nothing's happening! Sheeeeesh.

Cmdr Don

-- Cmdr Don (donfmwyo@earthlink.net), January 08, 2000.

Fred

Did your mother have any children that lived?

-- justwondering (justwondering@giveitabreak.com), January 08, 2000.

Cmdr Don, I hadn't thought about that! It probably was a domino effect from the a failure at the power company that got transfered across the power lines! Those dadburned cascading cross- whatchamacallit bugs! Or the bad gas! Speaking of which...

-- Fred Bryce (fredbryce@hotmail.com), January 08, 2000.

JustWondering, you're assuming I had a mother. Now if you've read enough on this board, surely you know what assuming does...

-- Fred Bryce (fredbryce@hotmail.com), January 08, 2000.

Fred, all the forced-air furnaces I am familiar with have a heat sensor that will not let the fan run unless it is satisfied. The logic board should not be able to override this sensor. Some thermats have a subbase seting for "fan only". What exactly did you turn on and off?

-- John Littmann (LITTMANNJ@AOL.COM), January 09, 2000.

"the heater manufacturer has made _NO_ announcements that this failure was _NOT_ Y2K related."

Ok Fred, that's the key. To be fair, you should wait until someone responsible for the equipment involved in the failure says that it is definitely "not Y2K related." Then you can conclude that it is related, and spread the news to the world. You see, the idea here is to "counter-spin" them everytime you suspect a lie, to sort of balance out the lies vs. truth in the universe.

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), January 09, 2000.