Suburban living.....

I spent most of Tuesday morning and into the afternoon troubleshooting a problem with one of our Suburban gas furnaces.  We first realized we had a problem about 5 weeks ago when we camped overnight at Mono Lake.  As you may recall it got down to 17 degrees overnight and I turned on all three of the gas heaters when I got up.....the front heater that provides heat to the kitchen and salon area would not put out hot air.  It looked like it was lighting.....there is a 'site glass' that allows you to see inside the burner compartment to see if it is igniting......but it would go out after just 10 seconds.  Eventually it did come on and worked fine until it was time for us to leave, but since then it has not worked.  In fact, since then I could not even get it to 'light'.

So, using 'Troubleshooting 101' logic I started by removing the burner and the electrode ignitor hoping it was as simple as a clogged burner, or gas orifice.  I cleaned the burner making sure all the 'vents' in the burner were clear, the orifice, and the electrode, then reinstalled them and turned on the heater.  Within 10 seconds I heard the electronic ignition and could see that it had lit, and was burning a nice blue flame, but then the burner shut down in about 10 seconds.  I turned it off, then turned it back on again...same result.  I have the original owners manuals for each of the heaters and have now determined through a thorough reading of same that it is either the 'flame sensor' part of the electrode  that is not 'sensing' the flame, which causes the module board to shut off the gas, or the module board itself.  So, I have ordered the new electrode.

It was raining on an off during all of this, and once I had the heater put back together TLE and I decided to stay inside and spend the rest of the afternoon watching 'Insurgent', which is the second movie in a series from the book called 'Divergent'.  Around 1530, just as we were finishing the movie, my daughter Meredith dropped by to go to 'Taco Tuesday' at Tio's Tacos.   We left a little after 1600 hours to walk the 1 mile over to Tio's.  My other daughter, Kate, her husband Nick, and daughter Charlise drove over a little later to meet us.  By the way, their Asada Tacos are amazing.....there is a lot of 'Asada' on those tacos, and I was wishing as I finished the second of three that two would have been enough!  By the way, we ordered 5 tacos between us, plus a Negra Modelo beer....all for $13.45....the 5 tacos were $9.45, or $1.89 each.

My grand daughter, Charlise, wanted to walk home with TLE, Meredith and I so we headed out about 1730 for our walk home, which passed directly by the annual Riverside 'FOL' (Festival of Lights) along Mission Inn Ave.......

......and no walk down Mission Inn after dark is complete without stopping off at the 'Swiss Chalet' for the 'best hot chocolate on the planet' as their sign advises.....at $3 per it had better be.  Is it the 'best on the planet'....probably not, but it is very good.

Just as we hit the railroad crossing a blocks from Kate's home we got stopped by a long freight train.......it took about 10 minutes for it to pass as it was going quite slow.....just as it was finally passing another came right on it's heals, and this one stopped right at the crossing....ugh!  We ended up walking back a block so we could cross over to University, which passes under the tracks and finally get home.  We finally arrived home about 1630 hours.....an hour after we left Tio's.....it is normally a 20 minute walk.....at most!  We said our goodbyes to Meredith, and headed to the backyard and our coach for the evening.....

Thanks for stopping by!