[andrewthornton]

My furnace went out during the 2025 holiday and I couldn't get an appointment with a repair person for 2 days. It was getting very cold in my house so I went into my attic and made several videos of the furnace attempting to start and gave it to gemini. It diagnosed the issue immediately and had me spin one of the components (a small exhaust fan) while the furnace tried to fire. It came on immediately. I had to do that several times, but it worked until the HVAC service showed up.

[jodacola]

Very similar thing this week, and an interesting story to go along with it!

I called my normal HVAC company for my rental home because the tenant reported the AC wasn't cooling the house. When I called, I got one of the latest AI voice assistants to help me, and it was an awful experience and I ended up not hearing back after the assistant told me the office would call me back.

So, I went over to the house and used ChatGPT to help me diagnose the issue by taking some photos of the compressor panel outside. It walked me through what to check, I provided some diagnostic codes I witnessed... and it walked me through the very simple repair of replacing the $25 capacitor. It was going to cost me almost 4x that just for the service call to diagnose what was wrong in the first place.

So, the weird experience was: Gen AI made me lose trust in my normal HVAC company, and more Gen AI basically allowed me to replace my HVAC company and do the repair myself all in one day.

[linsomniac]

With AI you just don't get the full service of a professional HVAC guy though.

Like the time I had one of the bigger shops in town come by to get a quote for replacing a dual stage fan motor on an AC. The tech asked me if I'd like them to replace the contactor while they were in there because it is a part that often fails. I asked what a contactor was and he explained it. "Oh, like a relay?" I asked. I told him to quote the cost for "replacing the contactor, while they're already in there."

He quoted me $400 for the contactor, $750 for the fan. The contactor itself I later found out was was $7. I literally laughed in his face when he said that.

So, like I said, you just aren't going to get professional level assistance from an AI. Thankfully.

To end the story: one of the other guys I called for a quote on fixing this unit repaired it for free; the unit was still under warranty and it was fully covered. The original installer of this $12K unit was refusing to return my calls. Another "Not gonna get pro level service from an AI" story.

[dgemm]

Becoming increasingly convinced that the pattern that will stick is not AI "integrated" into everything but personal agents. As in I will have one personal assistant that helps me in all of my tasks instead of using the little ones bolted on to every product.

[userbinator]

Even before AI, YouTube was full of videos on these topics.

[nkoren]

Yeah, and with 95% of those videos, there'll be something they gloss over which I don't understand; or I'll have a concern which they don't address; or, conversely, they'll assume that their target audience was born in the 15th century, and spend 20 minutes building up the context, when what I really needed was about 12 seconds.

With an AI, I can say "I don't understand that part, can you explain more?" Or "what about this concern I just thought of", or "I already know almost enough about this, I just need this one gap filled in." It's an objectively better experience.

[studog]

That is a very good point I had not considered: AI to level-match the material to my "learning speed". I'll give it a try at the next opportunity.

[crispyambulance]

I do appreciate how helpful AI has been with troubleshooting and providing vital background info in repairing appliances. I've been doing this since before AI, as appliance repair services from professionals are all but gone where I live.

However, neither AI nor (most of) the videos can help with finagling frail snap-fit assemblies one encounters in appliances. A lot of appliance repair work is very simple but requires significant practice and figure-it-out time, in addition to waiting for sketchy parts from Ebay. Half the battle is just finding the damn parts.

[RussianCow]

Same with cars. Half the battle is sometimes just unscrewing an old bolt that hasn't been touched in 10+ years without breaking it, or getting the rusted on rotors to come off.

[ben_w]

When I was a kid, if I didn't know how to spell a word and asked the teacher, a common answer was to tell me to look it up in the dictionary.

As words in a dictionary are sorted alphabetically rather than phonetically, this is unhelpful.

YouTube videos have the same kind of problem, in that you can only easily find the video explaining which dielectric unions suit your problem when already know what those are (to use an example that I had to ask ChatGPT for because I have no plumbing experience even if I did know about galvanic corrosion and therefore immediately understood why they're important once I saw the name).

[chrismorgan]

You can also hopefully find user and service manuals online.

In 2009 or so a projector at some event that needed one wouldn’t start, and I noticed it was flashing a pattern, so I found a computer and internet connection (both very slow), painfully found and downloaded the manual for that model, and identified that it was saying the fan wasn’t starting. Lo and behold, a strut was broken and obstructing the fan blades, and bending it out of the way fixed it, and the event was able to begin.

I’ve found manuals for a drawbar organ, multiple digital pianos of different ages and brands, AC split systems, and more. Manuals are good stuff. They don’t cover everything, but they’re very useful.

For these sorts of things, AI is doing approximately nothing for you: you would do better (and learn more!) finding the actual manual, or you’ll want to see someone doing the thing in a video.

[fn-mote]

The bar for finding them is higher, though.

Tbh, I think people feel more comfortable asking an AI. Even though I “know” it’s all smoke and mirrors, I still prefer the human-like interaction to the grind of watching video after video and building my own understanding.

OOPS… there you see how it’s going to end. I’m the meatspace button-pusher.

[ElectricalUnion]

But now you have a even larger problem that the initial problem you were trying to solve: trying to sieve thru millions-of-hours of just slightly tangential videos trying to find the specific video fragment you need.

[brntheater]

Had something similar this week. Gas dryer started, but wouldn't heat. Gemini suggested it's often a thermal fuse. Took off the back panel and uploaded a photo to Gemini. It pointed me to the fuse (e.g. "the white rectangle above the blue and red cords") and walked me through testing it. Not only that, but it also linked me to the part I needed after I provided the model number of the dryer. Finally, it recommended cleaning out the vent as the fuse likely blew because heat wasn't venting properly. After a thorough cleaning of the exhaust and a $5 fuse the dryer is working fine.

[semiquaver]

I can (honestly) tell that exact same story, except offset by three years so it was before AI and I did the same exact steps and had the same insights except with Google results instead of an LLM providing the key unlocks.

[QuercusMax]

...and now you probably won't be able to find that info with regular Google and HAVE to use Gemini.

[tonyedgecombe]

I've been fitting a kitchen and chatGPT has been useful to bounce ideas off and resolve issues. Of course if IKEA's documentation wasn't so sparse I wouldn't need it but that's another story.

I guess I'm seeing similar benefits to a novice programmer. Professionals would scoff at my work but they are expensive and difficult to work with. Meanwhile I'm getting the job done.

On the other hand I'm not touching AI for any development work. I'm too worried about my skills atrophying or not properly learning anything new.

[rustyhancock]

Ikeas instructions are such an oddity.

It feels like there is precisely enough information to deduce each step. But only just enough miss one clue and you have something on upside down on step 7 that you won't notice until step 37.

I feel whoever makes them could probably make a wicked NY Times Crossword puzzle.

[baq]

IKEA instructions are the best in the industry - so imagine what the other companies are giving out.

They’re also actually good if you know to follow them exactly: double check every side, every hole, every screw and you won’t go wrong.

[tonyedgecombe]

So far I’ve found several mistakes, instructions that relate to no longer available items and a couple of ambiguities.

They may be good for the flat pack industry but they are a long way from perfect.

[dgemm]

Similar - had an HVAC tech out to diagnose mine (some intermittent electrical problem was killing thermostats randomly) and since it was intermittent they couldn't figure it out. I ended up using Gemini to narrow down a list of potential problem components and just replacing them all which fixed the issue.

Kind of a superpower to turn anyone with a bit of tech inclination and problem solving skills into an HVAC tech - not a very good one, but one with enough motivation to get the results you need

[ericmcer]

Same story, ended up just need to replace a fuse and clean out some filters.

I hate to be a "tech elitist" or whatever, but goddamn it seems like software is one of the most learning intensive careers you can pick. A little dabbling around the house has made me an amateur plumber/HVAC/handyman/gardener/etc. I should have gone into a trade, just for the comfort of having a skillset that doesn't need to be updated every 3 months. I guess my brain plasticity will thank me.

[joescharf]

Also similar - our Tesla Solar stopped producing (again). 3 week wait for service tech. In the meantime I had Claude probe the inverter, find endpoints for retrieving status, re-setting AFCI and Modbus TCP (for HA monitoring), etc. Claude was able to obtain installer mode access through a review the javascript bundle. I had Claude turn all this into an iOS app, which I used to gather data to diagnose the issue over the next week. Had Claude summarize the findings into a PDF that I provided to the Tesla Solar service rep, which in the words of said rep was very helpful.

[namanyayg]

I have a similar story with my washing machine repair. I went through 2 service technicians not being able to diagnose it. Gpt did it and I told the 3rd what to do and it worked.

[ssl-3]

That's pretty great.

(Though that's also the kind of hands-on troubleshooting step/fix that a person could just google for and find pretty easily back before the internet got all fucked up.)

[Cheetah26]

Your parenthetical really describes my experience with AI searches. 5+ years ago I could find most things within one or two quick searches, now it takes so many that of course I'm going to reach for AI because that's the only way to get back to my baseline efficiency.

[ssl-3]

I learned to troubleshoot furnaces late one cold night in 2004 using Google, while a worried wife and a couple of sleeping kids loomed over me like a dark cloud. I learned what thermocouples are, what they do, how they work, and how to test them; all of which was new to me. A few hours later I bought one from the Ace Hardware a few blocks away and fixed the furnace with confidence.

And that was awesome. Thanks, Google! :)

I don't know where the change happened. It certainly wasn't overnight.

Where Google used to be magical and other search engines quickly improved, it all kind of turned into shit.

It really seems that I was getting better, more-direct results from Altavista 30 years ago than I do with top-flight search engines today. (That's a deliberately low bar, chosen because Altavista wasn't even intended to be "good" back then. I mean, it started as just as a side project at DEC to demonstrate that their Alpha hardware was able to index the entire World Wide Web.)

So lately, I've been doing the same thing as you: I'm increasingly using ChatGPT to do this basic fact-finding stuff. In this way, it mostly operates the search engine for me, but it lets me drill down through a sea of terrible search results to find something useful fairly quickly.

It's still not great -- I still have to reject mountains of bullshit. But it's better than alternatives, and I can reject the bullshit with conceptual descriptions instead of trying to get Google to do what I need it to do (what it used to do).

It feels all wrong using an LLM to do this stuff, but whatever. I'm still getting stuff done.

[fuckinpuppers]

That’s a great way to summarize. Same

[goalieca]

That’s an old trick I learned when I googled “my furnace won’t start” back in the day. Didn’t have to make videos. Just scrolled a few handyman sites.

[userbinator]

but it worked until the HVAC service showed up.

Did you attempt to prompt it further into figuring out the actual problem, or know what they did to actually fix it? My bet is on a bad starting capacitor for the motor --- something that's a relatively cheap and quick repair.

[conductr]

Pretty much any motor having this symptom I swap a new capacitor in just to check before even calling a technician. I always just keep a spare on hand for my hvac and pool equipment.

[oceanplexian]

I installed 4 mini splits with it two years ago and they are still working great and blowing ice cold air.

It walked me through measuring refrigerant, subcool and superheat, pulling the vacuum, brazing the lines, exactly what tools to buy, I even input the numbers from the meter and it told me how much to add and so on. And this was with GPT4 or something far less intelligent.

In the past I tried to learn this stuff but the HVAC community are massive gatekeepers and try to hide information behind paywalls or spread FUD even though anyone could do it with the right tools and a little bit of knowledge.

[alberth]

Do you mind explain more. Did you just prompt to Gemini what was happening, did you give Gemini photos of Furnance, etc?

[gwbas1c]

> and made several videos of the furnace attempting to start and gave it to gemini

I assume recorded videos and uploaded them in the Gemini phone on their app; and then probably said "what's wrong?"

Gemini is very good at those kinds of things. I recently got some ratcheting straps and needed to use them, but at the time I didn't know what they were called, so I didn't know what to search for on Google. I opened the Gemini app, pushed the button to take a picture (just like in text messages,) and included a message that was similar to "what is this and how do I use it?"

[andrewthornton]

Yes, here is my prompt. It also contained a video: "I have a furnace that will not heat when I reset the power to this unit. It makes some noise within its fan system for about three or four minutes and then I get an error light. Can you help me figure out what may be wrong here?" This prompt is not the best but I was freezing and in my attic.

[wombat-man]

Oh yeah. I can't remember which LLM, but one helped me repair my dryer.

[AlwaysRock]

Yup. ChatGPT has become Chat General Contractor at my house. I am moderately handy. But talking through a project with an llm before I start it has been great at helping me evaluate its difficulty level, rough estimate of how long it will take, to dos and not to dos, and helping me get unstuck or fix a mistake.

And frankly its convinced me several times that I should just hire someone to do x instead of trying to do it myself.

The alternative is watching youtube videos which are almost always diy people who try to tell you that you can do everything yourself.

[hammock]

Sounds like a blown capacitor

[buckle8017]

Gemini almost killed you.

The exhaust blower not working triggered a safety that prevented the furnace from firing.

Spinning it bypassed the safety.

You likely inhaled a lot more carbon monoxide than you know.

[llbbdd]

Can you elaborate? I interpreted the same as the other comment that the blower fan just needed a hand start and kept going after the furnace started up. What you're saying only makes sense to me if the spinning the fan by hand allowed the furnace to start by bypassing the safety at startup, but wouldn't that mean that if the exhaust fan was stopped during normal operation (blockage etc) that the furnace would just keep going, dumping CO into the home?

[andrewthornton]

It wasn't bypassing, I was just helping start because of what I believe to have been a bearing issue.

[doubled112]

It’s a pretty normal trick to try while troubleshooting a rotating part.

Helping something start is not likely to ruin your day (unless you get caught in a rotating part)

[chiph]

Gas heat uses two fans - one to blow air to the rooms (often shared with an A/C system), and another smaller one[1] to supply air to the gas burners and the heat exchanger. As part of the safety system, the computer won't open the gas valve and ignite the burners until it knows there is airflow from the small fan.

When GP spun the fan it fooled the computer into thinking it was running and continuing the ignition sequence. It may be that once the burners got everything hot there was enough airflow from the thermals so they didn't have a buildup of CO. Or were just lucky.

[1] The motor is usually generic but has a proprietary bracket, which was a $1500 lesson last year

[llbbdd]

In the case I described then, what would normally happen if the fan is blocked after ignition? Like if I had a fully functioning system, booted it up, and then blocked the fan from spinning with a stick, the computer is going to keep the gas valve open and fill my house with CO?

[andrewthornton]

I was spinning it in reverse actually, but it would be enough to start the exhaust blower. It would also re-start pretty well for ~6 hours. It was probably the bearing. Also FWIW I have multiple carbon monoxide/air quality monitors and nothing tripped or alarmed.

[philipkglass]

From the description I thought that a degraded capacitor or lack of lubrication made the blower not start on its own, but the blower (and the whole furnace) would work if given a manual startup spin by hand.

[baq]

The exhaust blower triggering a safety stop is normal when the blower should be blowing but isn’t. If the blower keeps spinning after it’s spun up manually everything is now working as intended. If it stopped blowing the furnace would go into safe mode again. Ask me how I know and I’ll tell you I had a broken blower on a cold winter before Gemini was a thing.

[llm_nerd]

There are multiple continuous safety checks on such a system, and there was no risk of injury here. The fan itself is constantly monitored. Much more importantly, the pressure on the exhaust chamber is constantly measured (which can catch things like blocked outlets, a fan that might be spinning but not effective, etc).

If the exhaust fan couldn't maintain that negative pressure after the user stopped spinning it, the furnace would turn off again.

Their hack worked because the fan couldn't get the initial inertia up to speed (bad capacitor, dusty bearings, etc), but could maintain speed once it gets there. Have you never had an old home fan that would just hum when you turn it on but then work fine if you gave it the original crank? Same premise.

There was no risk here. If the fan didn't spin up to speed after that initial manipulation, and didn't constantly maintain the necessary flow, the furnace would have turned off again.

[ssl-3]

This is all true.

What is also true: If the induction blower/draft inducer/fan-thing/widget is not creating enough pressure differential to trigger the switch that exists just to monitor this condition, then the gas valve will not be opened to begin with. Therefore, there will be no fuel.

Without fuel, there can be no combustion. Without combustion, there are no combustion products. This lack of combustion products does not produce any particular danger. :)

[bityard]

None of what you said is actually how furnaces work.

"Spinning it to bypass the safety" is not a thing.

Please don't spread FUD.

[pesus]

Welp, AI almost killing someone is definitely an "oh shit" moment.

[saturn8601]

Wonder how many AI deaths have occured that we dont know about(since they presumably died). With the adoption numbers we are seeing it much have happened already.

[ben_w]

I'd be surprised if it was less than hundreds, or more than hundreds of thousands.

High hundreds of thousands feels like the upper limit before it would show up in statistically noticeable changes in patterns of deaths in some demographic.

High hundreds of individuals would still be "one in a million fatal errors over a few years", which seems better than I'd expect given I've personally had ChatGPT tell me that Solanum nigrum berries were "black tomatoes" (they're not usually fatal, but are a bit toxic, and no I did not eat them).

[ihsw]

The most interesting part is that there is no direct line between someone's accidental death and a chatbot giving life-threatening advice.

Imagine one of the models that has "accidental-deaths-via-bad-advice" just slightly turned up, with the model-provider's intent being to kill 5% more people per year.

[sugarkjube]

Killing your customers is not the best way to stay in business

[ben_w]

If you're paranoid (or a hawk), imagine a Chinese LLM that only offers fatal advice when queried English, or an American LLM that only offers fatal advice when queried in Chinese. Or American and Russian models which only offer up fatal advice when queried in German, Finish, or Danish.

[inglor_cz]

(Exceptions like euthanasia clinics apply.)

[kunjanshah]

https://www.covenantairesolutions.com/post/what-is-a-furnace...

“At its core, it's a small motor with a fan attached that has one primary job: to vent harmful exhaust gases out of your home before the burners ever kick on. This is the very first step in the heating sequence, and it's non-negotiable for a safe startup.“

[Izkata]

The original comment was unclear whether the fan kept spinning while the furnace was running, or if all it did was bypass the safety and the fan didn't continue to spin while the furnace ran. They clarified in their response it kept spinning.

[MPSimmons]

It seemed obvious to me that this was bearing stiction and that manually rotating it during the start allowed the fan to spin on its own after that, but I could be wrong and maybe the fan was dead entirely?

[modriano]

Yeah, that would be my assumption too (based on my admittedly incomplete personal experience where I got my furnace running by manually spinning my draft inducer motor, which kept spinning).

As exhausting the combustion products is a critical safety feature, I would be surprised if any furnace was designed such that it could possibly keep running if the draft inducer motor stopped. It seems like it would be trivially easy to make a circuit such that gas valves could only open if the draft inducer motor + fan wasn't spinning.