Our York looks healthy enough. So why all the groaning?

The furnace check-up is due this afternoon.

Now there’s a statement that will make this grown man shake in fear, with the potential for real sadness at the end of the visit.

Our heat-thrower, a compact-looking York model, has been a solid cornerstone of our utility room since my dear wife Karen and I moved into our city home in the Eastwood neighborhood of Syracuse, N.Y., a decade ago. We try to treat it well. And when the man from the heating and plumbing company headquartered an Ellie B-walk away comes to put his stethoscope on the heart, I watch and listen.

I know how to change the filter. Easy, a couple times each winter.

I’ve learned how to remove the front plate, take out a screw way-in-the-back-and-at-an-awkward-angle, lift out the electronic firing pin and clean it with steel wool. That lesson came the hard way, from the servicer after the ignition system failed to spark her up one cold day in, I’d like to say, our second winter in the house. I make sure to clean the pin a couple of times each winter, paying no mind that I always somehow slip with the screwdriver and gash a finger on a sharp furnace innard.

I can toggle the electronic ignition switch to reboot the computer. Last year, the board went bad, I flipped and flipped and flipped to no avail, and we had to have that brain of the operation replaced.

Oh, yeah, I can turn the thermostat up and down with the precision of a safecracker.

That’s it.

And no matter what, whenever I crouch low and reintroduce myself to the insides of that fiery beast, I can’t help but imagine what happens when flame meets natural gas in a less strictly controlled environment. Yes, like when a wire gets loose or a valve gets stuck.

Blammo.

The furnace has been making weird noises.

Vibrations. Clicks and clacks. Yes, the clacks sound different than the clicks. A grinding sound. Groans. Nothing pleasant, I tell you. Something like this: Click, click, clack, click, grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, vrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, whoooooosh, yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii. And then the blower starts and heat rises from the registers to warm our world.

My proof of cleaning the electronic firing pin.

Sometimes the ignition doesn’t happen the first cycle through, and it clicks, clacks and grinds some more. I’ve already cleaned the firing pin (and washed out the ding on my finger) this week. So far, it’s ignited on the second time through the cycle. I thought the new computer board, not yet in place a calendar year, was supposed to take care of this.

Now, I am not fluent in furnacian, but I do believe it is telling me something isn’t feeling well.

I called my heating company neighbors yesterday.

The furnace check-up is this afternoon.

I’ll be the one watching, listening, holding my breath.

Can our York be fixed easily? Please and thank you. Does it need a major repair? Go ahead, do what must be done. Is, it — depressing organ chords here — down for the count? Owwwwwwwwww.

My checkbook and my emotions are on high alert.

Update after the repair visit:

Chris, the friendly and smart technician from Perrone Heating and Potter Plumbing, has come and gone. He gave the shake, rattle and roll a good listen.

No, he did not get up to dance.

Instead, he knew exactly what parts were clicking and groaning, and gave all nuts and bolts a good tightening to put the old York back on even keel.

It’s not whispering, but it is a dozen years old, he told me.

Max life expectancy, I asked? Fifteen years.

Ah. The story may continue.

Have you ever had to replace your furnace? How old was the one you took out? Does the new one seem way more efficient?