My furnace saga took 6 weeks and a very confused squirrel

Back in February my furnace started making this weird clicking noise, you know, like someone flicking a light switch inside the ductwork. I called three HVAC places and they all said it was the igniter, so I spent $240 on a part and swapped it out myself, only for the noise to get louder. Turns out a squirrel had gotten into my soffit in Lethbridge and was basically tap dancing on the vent pipe every time the heat kicked on, which made the pressure switch freak out. The actual fix was a $15 piece of hardware cloth and a ladder I borrowed from my neighbour, after I'd already replaced the igniter AND a blower capacitor for no reason. Six weeks of troubleshooting for a rodent problem, and my wife still brings it up every time the thermostat clicks. Has anyone else had a wild animal mess with their heating system in a totally non-obvious way?

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valthomas1mo ago

Ha! You think a squirrel is bad? I'm going to play tough love here, but you brought this on yourself. You spent $240 on a part and then a blower capacitor without ever looking outside your own walls, and that's about as lazy as troubleshooting gets. The noise was coming from the ductwork, so maybe a quick peek at the actual vent pipe on the roof, which takes ten minutes, should have been step one instead of step ten. Honestly, that squirrel did you a favor by exposing how quick you are to throw money at parts instead of using your brain for five seconds. Six weeks of your life because you didn't want to borrow a ladder on day one, that's not a rodent problem, that's a you problem.

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