Ask the Builder: How to Avoid Expensive Service Calls

I’m going to share a few tips in this column that should save you many hundreds of dollars.
Ask the Builder: How to Avoid Expensive Service Calls
An inexpensive stainless steel kitchen strainer is in place to capture all of this food waste. Failure to do this can create clogs in kitchen drain pipes. Tim Carter/Tribune Content Agency/TNS
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I don’t know of a living person that looks forward to an expensive service call. Your AC may quit on the hottest day, your kitchen sink may get clogged with egg shells three hours before your Thanksgiving guests arrive, or your furnace or boiler may decide to take the night off during a wicked cold spell. I’m going to share a few tips in this column that should save you many hundreds of dollars.

You may think I don’t suffer as you might, but I’m not immune to service calls. Just last year, my wife called me on a frigid December morning while I was at my son’s house. She awoke to a very cold house. I had stayed the night at my son’s house, 70 miles south. I was doing back-to-back days of work, helping him finish his basement.

Tim Carter
Tim Carter
Author
Tim Carter is the founder of AsktheBuilder.com. He's an amateur radio operator and enjoys sending Morse code sitting at an actual telegrapher's desk. Carter lives in central New Hampshire with his wife, Kathy, and their dog, Willow. Subscribe to his FREE newsletter at AsktheBuilder.com. He now does livestreaming video M-F at 4 PM Eastern Time at youtube.com/askthebuilder. (C)2022 Tim Carter. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.