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That’s what it is alright … Sabotage. I tried to enter the house today and found that all the locks were changed and she hadhand made “No Trespassing” signs posted. Luckily the ex had left a window unlocked figuring she might have needed to enter the home another way herself. I climbed through the window and did a quick “come here boy” whistle for any potential pit bulls that might have been left behind to greet me. The coast was clear though.

I looked around the house a bit and went downstairs and found the door leading to the basement, which I previously had a key for, was boarded shut. “Nice touch” I thought to myself. I reached my hands around one of the studs and fully expected to just rip it off the door frame. It didn’t budge. Guess I have to go back for my tools. It turned out that each stud had two 6 inch drywall screws in each. They weren’t a normal Philips head either, but a torx screw.

I got the boards off and went through to turn on the furnace so I could get some heat and hot water going. The furnace wouldn’t turn on. I quickly checked what I could and saw that the circuit breaker was on as well as the emergency switch, but it was late and I figured I would take care of it the next day.

The next morning I continued to diagnose the problem and even had a friend come over to look with me. We could see power getting down to the motor, but we concluded it might have just been a coincidence that a circuit board went bad as the status lights would not come on. I called for a real repair man and set the appointment for that evening.

As it turns out I could not get it out of my head that maybe everything was working and that somehow the ex had her new husband disable it. I checked all the connections and it all appeared good. Then I thought of the secondary emergency switch located upstairs.

I ran (OK – I really just walked) up the stairs to the wall plate. I figured it was a waste of time as it still had dust sitting on it without any finger prints or clean patches on it from where the dust would have been disturbed – but I unscrewed it off the wall anyway. I peered through the side of the switch and that’s when I saw a white wire sitting all by itself – unhooked to anything. I looked at the switch and sure enough the screw that had previously held that wire, was sticking out. I hooked the wire up and flipped the switch and immediately heard the furnace kick on. I can’t believe that they disabled the switch, which would have been behind the door they boarded up.

By the time I go down the stairs, the furnace had turned off. Crap! I checked the oil in the tanks and it was ¾ full. Then I went to the valve next to the furnace. Something looked funny about it. I called a friend and he explained to me about how that valve was suppose to work. There is supposed to be a screw cap on it that as you turn it, pulls up on a screw that opens the valve. Well the cap was missing. A quick run to the plumbing supply store took care of that. Once again the furnace was working and this time it was staying on. Sabotage was what I thought it was in the beginning and sabotage is what it wound up being. The people I tell this story to can’t believe the ex would go through this much trouble to make things harder on me - much less get her new husband involved with her. He must be as big an idiot as she is but I expect that he will be calling me soon enough, probably asking for a good lawyer. It’s only a matter of time before the lioness tires of me as prey and turns her vengeance against him. Only a matter of time.

P.S. I canceled the repair man for that evening.