A couple of years ago, my wonderful wife, Cecelia, decided that she wanted us to get each other “experiences” for Christmas.
Since she is always complaining about being cold, I bought her a heater. It is one of those small, oscillating tower things. I told her the “experience” was warmth.
She rolled her eyes, but each winter she keeps it plugged in blowing hot air at her while she is sitting on the loveseat in our living room watching television. (FYI-she got some other experiences too that year, like tickets to the musical “Cats.”)
Last year, she wanted more “experiences.”
You guessed it. I bought her a second little heater that she keeps elsewhere and uses on a regular basis in the winter time and probably during a few other seasons too for that matter.
For the past couple of weeks, those “experience” presents have come in handy for her.
Heat, or more particularly furnaces in this case, are something that you don’t give a lot of thought to until they go out and it always happens at the coldest times.
A couple of months ago, we got one of those hanger things on our front door from Delta Gas informing us that they had turned off our gas in order to do something to the meter. The door hanger listed some numbers to call in order to arrange to get your gas turned back on and get the pilot lights lit again.
Since the only thing we use gas for is our downstairs furnace and temperatures had been pretty mild, it wasn’t a high priority to get the pilot lights relit. I mean it is a pretty simple process that only take a few minutes or at least it should be a simple process although nothing home-related ever ends up being simple for us.
It was getting colder so about two weeks ago, I called to schedule a day and the very nice Delta Gas worker and I met at the house so he could turn the gas back on and relight the pilot light in the furnace or so we both thought.
After several minutes he couldn’t get it relit despite several attempts. He looked at the furnace and noticed that both burners were pretty rusted out and another part on the furnace didn’t look too good either.
He noted that it might be time to get a new one. I figured that he probably wasn’t wrong. The furnace came with the house when Cecelia and I bought it 19 years ago, and I am pretty sure that the furnace had been there for several years prior to that.
I made my go to call to Harold Douglas to get a second opinion about the furnace. He made it over there the same day to look at it. The news wasn’t good. They don’t make those furnaces anymore and the parts for them are really expensive if you can even find them. Harold concluded what I already suspected, which is we needed a new furnace.
Remember when I told you that when it comes to home repairs, nothing is ever simple for us?
Well, they no longer make furnaces the exact same size as the one we currently have. Harold is in the process of finding one close in size to the one we have and then he is going to have to get a little bit creative in terms of getting it hooked up with our existing vents. Before he can start work on it though, the new furnace has to ship and it is the holidays after all.
Maybe, just maybe, by the end of the week, we will have heat again. (Not sure if I am trying to convince you or me…LOL.)
Until that time, we have been making due with a handful of heaters that my wife has borrowed from some wonderful co-workers. Thanks to everyone, who has loaned us a heater or offered too. The list is pretty long at this point.
Of course, we only use those heaters while we are at home and awake so the house is getting pretty cold during the day and overnight, much to the chagrin of our two geriatric cats. Gizmo, which is the longer haired of the duo, doesn’t seem to mind quite as bad as his sister, Gadget, who meows angrily at us first thing in the morning when the house is cold.
When we are home, Gadget has been spending quite a bit of time on a pillow in my wife’s lap with the experience of warmth blowing on her and Ceceila.
One of the more creative suggestions on heating up our house, came from Amanda Wyatt, who is the wife of my co-worker Timothy Wyatt. She suggested that the house would probably heat up pretty quickly from hot air if we got me, Timothy, and our co-worker, Trevor Sherman, in there talking. In fairness, our part of the office doesn’t get too cold in the wintertime…LOL.
