A Mystery Noise Brought the Fire Department to The Nut House

When I say mystery noise, I really mean a crazy high pitched squealing, screeching, screaming noise coming from my furnace. Or at least that is where we believe it came from. Now that it is not screeching any more, we really don’t have any idea what caused it.

This city is paving our back alley today, and when I first heard the noise I thought it was coming from one of the work trucks outside. After a few seconds, I sent Wing Nut to go investigate the noise and tell me where it is coming from. He came back reporting that it was coming from down in the basement. When I opened the door, a high pitched noise so loud it made my ears hurt came from the area around the furnace and hot water heater. It sounded like all 7 of our hard wired smoke detectors were going off all at the same time. It was really strange and I went into panic mode. I rushed to find a pair of shoes…because yes, if I am going to be rushing to do something, especially in the basement, I need shoes. On the way to my shoes I turned off our thermostat then headed down to the basement. At first I thought for sure the noise would stop when I turned off the thermostat, but it didn’t. Then I ran down and turned the main power off to the furnace, but that didn’t help either.

It is also important to know that my furnace was not on and the fan wasn’t running…but still it was making the most horrible sound! After switching the main power off, I took the front panel off of the furnace and turned that off as well. Still my furnace was screaming at me. After calling Wall Nut to see if he could give me any advice, which he couldn’t because I could barely hear what he was saying and I guess the cell phone filtered out the screeching noise because he didn’t hear a thing. So I did the next best thing…

I told the big kids to get out of the house while I rounded up the little kids and called 911. We hung out in our front yard and waited as first the fire SUV showed, followed by a fire truck, followed by a police car and finally followed by another fire truck. And you know what they found? Absolutely nothing. By the time they got here, the noise had stopped. They tested for gas and got nothing. I had 4 firemen in my house and a police officer outside and it turned out that they couldn’t find any reason for my furnace to be screaming at me.

When all was clear, I grabbed my camera, of course, so I could get photos of the kids in front of the fire truck and the police officer was kind enough to stop in front of picture and pose for a photo as well 🙂

Of course with all of the excitement going on there was no way to get the kids to stand still for photo all at once…I think the photo shows their excitement 🙂

After the fire department and police drove away, we called our HVAC guy and they sent a technician out to look at our furnace and hot water heater which are right next to each other. Again, he found nothing. Soooo, my furnace was screaming at me for no reason and my kids are still all bubbling and having a hard time getting back into their lessons.

The amazing thing about all of this, is how responsive and brave my kids were. Everyone started helping out right way and all stayed calm. When I told everyone “Get out of the house, I am calling 911” They all jumped over the gates and where outside within a matter of seconds. I am so proud of them for their ability to stay calm and follow direction in an emergency situation. In the end, everything was fine…even though we remain clueless and will now be watching our furnace closely for a good long while…everything was fine, and my kids got to experience an emergency in our home.