Our furnace started a fire in our house on Christmas day! Even worse, the furnace made our Christmas tree catch on fire! It all started the week before Christmas when we noticed that our furnace was making some strange sounds.
My husband checked the smart thermostat to see if any maintenance checks were due for the furnace, but nothing came up and according to the smart thermostat, there was nothing wrong with the furnace.
My husband went into the basement and took the furnace apart and looked over it, although he is not an HVAC technician, he usually can figure out his way around a furnace or central air conditioner. After a little bit of work, he called the heating and cooling company and schedule for an HVAC technician to come and take a look at our furnace, but due to a really bad snow storm, the HVAC technician could not get to our house, so we just hoped that our furnace was ok and got ready for Christmas. Early on Christmas morning, our family woke up to the smoke alarms going off. We ran around the house following the trail of smoke, and came to our living room where our Christmas tree was on fire! We quickly put out the fire and opened the windows. It turns out that our furnace had overheated and sent really hot air through the air ducts. Our Christmas tree was right in front of the air duct, so the hot air ended up catching the tree on fire! Our smart thermostat was also blinking red telling us that our furnace was overheating. What an eventful Christmas!