The season is turning. The trees of Canberra throw a mixed pastiche of gold leaf and cabernet. Chilly mornings and cooler evenings portend the frosts and ice soon to come.

The perfect time for our central heating to die.

A couple of weeks back we turned it on… just to take the crisp out of an early autumn evening. I fired up the control panel. Only to be advised with an error message and stone cold silence.

OK. Don’t panic. We called up for a technician to come out and diagnose the problem. Soon enough he arrived and after checking the control panel and hoisting up into the roof space to quickly consult the guts of the machine (the whole time chatting to a mate on his mobile), he gave us the prognosis:

Mate. It’s broken.

OK then. This was exactly what the error code had told us. But we greatly appreciated the $250 confirmation. I expect the update on the ‘Rabbitos’ likelihood of winning the footy league this year was a free bonus service. We should be grateful for that.

Now we are screwed. Turns out it was the mother board. A part that would cost two hundred dollars to replace…only they don’t make it any more.

Lucky for you I think they might have a spare out at the factory.
A week later we had not heard anything more. We called them.

Oh yes the XDC quatro-blah-whatever motherboard. Um………nope. Sorry

So now we have to replace the entire system. And by the way, the ducting standards have all changed and are no longer compatible. So we will need to replace all the ducting while we are at it.

Estimated cost?
Somewhere between eleven and eighteen thousand dollars.

I have written before about the conspiratorial failure of manufacturers to provide replacements for expected (and sometimes baked in) product issues.

It truly is a painful stink.

Instead of paying $200 to replace a simple circuit board (plus the cost of the instillation and footy updates of course) NOW we have to outlay a significant amount of money to replace the entire system.

Also. The days are getting chill.
We are working through getting quotes and potential instillation dates.
All the time the earth swings further out into the long cold winter of space at 30 kilometres per second.

---

Main photo:  Harrison Broadbent