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"This past weekend I had a bad experience. The short story is that an A. J. Perri technician diagnosed my furnace problem and wrote me an estimate for $1,600, parts and labor. It turns out my furnace had a different problem that required no parts and only 15 minutes of labor. Here are the details: This past Saturday my furnace stopped heating my home. I called A.J. Perri and they sent out a technician on Sunday morning. The tech ran some checks and concluded that my “inducer assembly” had to be replaced. Parts and installation would be $1,600. He said someone from the office would contact me on Monday and let me know when they could have the part. He also said that he couldn't be certain that there weren't other issues that wouldn't be found until the inducer was repaired. After the technician left I did some searching on the Internet. YouTube and Reddit were especially helpful. I discovered that the problem was that the condensate drain was clogged and water had backed up into the inducer assembly. The water prevented the pressure switches from detecting that the inducer was running and this prevented the furnace from starting. When I disconnected the condensate hose *2 quarts* of water drained out of the inducer assembly! This water was supposed to drain into a small pump unit on the floor that sends collected water to the sump. Over the years mold and algae had clogged the condensate trap and caused the backup. I disconnected all the hoses and removed the trap. I blew out the trap (making a mess) and confirmed that water would easily flow through it. I put it all back together and the furnace is working fine. The sad lesson here is that you can’t always rely on supposed experts. The good news is that the Internet can be your friend. Even more details: The original symptom was that the furnace would start up, the inducer motor would run for about 20 seconds and then it would shut off. This cycle would repeat every few minutes. Every few hours the furnace completed the startup cycle and then I’d get heat. Then it would stop heating for hours, and the indoor temperature would drop to the low 60s. What I learned from YouTube is that there are multiple stages for furnace startup. The inducer motor spins a cage that sucks in fresh air for combustion, and then pushes the hot gases through the heat exchanger and out the flue. Each stage in the startup has safety checks. The furnace will not ignite if the pressure sensors don’t detect that the inducer motor is working properly. Water is a byproduct of the combustion. It starts as a vapor but then condenses in the flue pipe and drains back to the inducer assembly, where it’s supposed to run through a hose to a pump that sends it over to my basement sump. The furnace is 14 years old. Apparently that’s long enough for mold and algae to clog the condensate trap and cause water to back up into the inducer. The 2 qts of water blocked the pressure sensor switches and so the furnace wouldn’t light. Final thoughts: For over 14 years I've had great experiences with A.J. Perri. They replaced my home’s original furnace and Air Conditioner units. They moved our outside A/C unit to the side of our house so we could have more quiet in the backyard. I had them come for periodic heating and A/C maintenance checkups. My impression is that they might cost a bit more, but they were reliable. I'm saddened that I need to post such a negative review."