Last week our blower stopped blowing. There was a distinct hot electrical smell coming from the air intake, so it was a fairly safe bet that the motor was finally dying. It had issues last year, but we managed to get it started back up and left the blower running all the time. I climbed into the attic, opened up the cover to the blower, and pulled the unit out to see if I could clean it, and possibly get it going again for a little bit longer. It just wasn’t going to go. I vacuumed a lot of dust off the motor and fan blades, but it still wasn’t going to start back up. Even giving it a helpful push wouldn’t get it spinning again.

We made a few calls, and quickly confirmed that local suppliers only dealt with licensed contractors, and HVAC professionals would charge us at least $60 just to come out and tell us the motor would need to be relaced. After some online research, we decided to purchase a new motor and capacitor from Daves Parts Online. The entire order came up to just under $170! I’m fairly confident that the service charges alone from a licensed contractor could have easily outdone that price.

The new motor and capacitor arrived yesterday. I immediately changed into my work clothes and headed back into the attic to pull the blower. Removing the blower was the easy part, the hard part turned out to be removing the fan blades from the old motor shaft. It seems that 10 years of fine dust can really make parts stick together. After a full afternoon of carefully applying various implements of destruction, I managed to extract all the parts and give the fan blades a good cleaning to get rid of the dust buildup. I was just finishing the final assembly of the blower unit when Joy arrived home from work. At this point we decided that taking a break for dinner would be a good choice to give my back a break, and stop our stomaches from grumbling.

With a full tummy, and a rested back, I hauled the newly reassembled blower back into the attic. The old motor was lead-less (it had a plug on the side rather than loose wires), and the new motor had leads, so now I had the fun task of removing the old wiring harness from the control board and running the leads from the new motor and attaching them top the proper locations. I performed a quick test before closing everything, and was happy to see the motor start spinning right away! I re-attached the front, plugged it back in, and headed back down to finally relax!

It’s so nice to have air blowing out of the vents again, but it’s even nicer to know that there is one more thing around the house that I can do myself without paying someone else.