New Year luck...

Today and tomorrow we have to deal with one of those things one typically takes for granted -- how the house is heated. When the time came to turn on the furnace this fall, we found the welcome warmth accompanied by an incessant banging of great frequency. Since we have steam heat our first reaction was that this was merely the usual clanging of pipes that comes with the start of each cold season. But after a bit it became evident that this was something different -- and the noise did not stop even after we took steps to 'bleed' the system of the 'trapped air' that we are told typically cause most such noises. Finally, a call to our oil company brought out a technician who declared that the banging was actually from an old overworked water intake system that had gone bad (and noisily so) because it is constantly feeding a leak in the furnace. In short, we needed a new furnace. And so came the bad news -- around $8000 of it, and we braced for the bill as well as the inevitable installation which we anticipated with trepidation. After all, it is midwinter in New England, and the unit itself is a hulking presence in our basement that would clearly take hours to remove. We foresaw a tearing and wrenching of our lives and Randi even made hotel reservations. But as luck would have it, we delayed until just after the New Year, and thankfully we are having two days of unseasonably warm weather (in the 40s and 50s F). And after a bit of heavy lifting and clanging and hauling, etc in the morning by a crew of five or so folks, it turned out that the installation has not been as disruptive as we expected. In fact, I even spent most of my day in my office dungeon which is merely a thin wall away from the room where the new oil furnace was being installed by two very quiet (relatively speaking) gentlemen who would make their presence known every so often with a rather loud pipe bang. Even better was the fact that we have heat tonight from our new unit even though the installation continues tomorrow. All seems to be going so well that I am expecting to find out tomorrow that I have won some lottery for $8000 that will cover the costs! I guess I shouldn't push my luck.... Tags: New England, home heating, Mel Dubnick, accountabilitybloke