I recently bought each of my kids a new hydration pack, and I’m hoping it gets them a little more excited about hiking this year. Normally they just carry water bottles, but Bradley often dumps his out on the ground and plays in the mud that it makes. I would like to do some more family hiking when it warms up outside. I’ve got my eye on Furniture Draw for an early spring hike. It would be a relatively easy two-mile hike in one direction if we spotted another vehicle at the bottom of the canyon where it meets up with Buckhorn Wash. Traci and I would also like to do Moonshine Wash again, but this time with the kids in tow. The last time we went through there, some people (including Samantha and Mark) brought some of their kids and they seemed to have an easy time. Granted, our kids are quite a bit younger, but it’s also easier to lift them up or lower them over the difficult parts. I just hope that the boys get half as enthused about it as I am.
As for the problems with the furnace, I’ve decided to wait until Monday to call a repair person. The problem is intermittent and has only occurred three times in the past several days, so I’m not sure what good it would do to rush somebody over here to fix something that likely won’t manifest itself. There is a status light inside the furnace that is supposed to blink a certain number of times when a part is failing, and so far I haven’t been standing at the furnace to witness how many times it blinks when the burners go out. I will probably spend a lot of time babysitting the damned thing until it acts up, and that should give me enough information to tell the repair person what’s wrong. This is going to be a fun weekend.
You probably just need to clean the igniter.
The fan stays on to blow out the unburned gas.
I don’t think it’s the igniter because the burners light up just fine. The problem is that the burners go out before the thermostat clicks off, which probably means that the thermocouple (flame sensor) is mistakenly sensing that the flame has gone out, so it shuts off the gas as a safety measure. At that point, both fans (the main blower and the exhaust fan) remain on, then the igniter comes on, the gas turns on, and the burners light up again. Then either the cycle starts over again and the burners go out, or in most cases it operates normally again and doesn’t act up for another day or two. I still have yet to catch it in the act, but I’ve heard the flames go out a couple of times while I was in another room.
I’ve wanted to hike Furniture Draw from top to bottom. I started hiking it back in July and turned around because of the heat. It does get narrow in some places, but it doesn’t provide too much shade around noon.