PSA: check ALL the breakers

[vavet]

It started raining last Wednesday night and continued for most of the day Thursday. When I got home Thursday evening from work, the house felt cold. I figured it was just the damp air. I finally checked the thermostat. It was set for 70, but it was 66 inside. I stuck a thermometer into one of the grates - it registered about 65. OK. Something is wrong.
I changed the thermostat to use aux heat - it's a heat pump with propane backup instead of the electric resistance heat.
It's expensive to run that way, but it's effective.
I set up an appointment with a local HVAC contractor Friday morning for today (Tuesday).
The good idea fairy paid a visit over the weekend - turn off the breaker, leave it for a few minutes, then turn it back on. I did that. No change when I turned it back on.
HVAC tech comes out this morning. He was working outside for about an hour when I went to check. He said it was all good. It had a low pressure fault showing, but the pressures/refrigerant levels showed OK. He thinks what happened was the rain got into the outdoor unit fan and physically froze it in place - created the fault and wouldn't run until that error code was cleared.
I told him about resetting the circuit breakers and he asked if I did it for the heat pump or the furnace. I told him there was only one....except I was wrong. I stopped looking when I found the heat pump breaker. If I'd reset the furnace breaker, then it probably would've started working. Now I know.

 

[bonneyman]

Yep. Had that one burn me once.

I was on-call many years ago, and got a call at midnight on a Saturday. Drive almost an hour to get to the woman's house. A storm had just blown through, and the A/C was out. Climbed into the attic, and found no power to the furnace. Told her about it, and she said she'd turned off all the breakers until the storm passed - and then turned them back on. Checked the main box - the furnace breaker was off. She said she didn't need the furnace - she needed cool. I told her the A/C runs thru the furnace, so, the furnace being off means no A/C. Oh, she said, she didn't know that. Being a home warranty call all she paid was the $35 copay. And I drove all the way home - almost falling asleep at the wheel! - wondering how many well-intentioned but uneducated customers cause the problems they have.