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Sunday night was nasty. Cold. Raw. Rainy. The kind of weather that demonstrates why hibernation and central heat are such great leaps forward in mammalian evolution. But, lured by a free meal, we ventured out long enough to enhance our appreciation of the snug comfort of home — a snug comfort that deemed to be unpleasantly diminished at our return.
Initially, I didn’t give it much thought. Being energy-minded folks (the kids just called us cheap), we generally keep the thermostat set at a point some folks insist is more appropriate for a meat locker than a residence so I just figured one of us had grown overenthusiastic about saving the earth and moseyed over to give the furnace an encouraging tweak.
But it was already tweaked. The setting was up, but the temperature was down. Adding to the distress, I could hear the rumble from the cellar that told me the furnace was running — but, thermodynamically speaking, running in place. In fact, it was losing ground.
I jiggled the thermostat to no avail, then removed the cover and peered at the innards with the best look of technical understanding I could muster plastered all over my face.
“I better go down and check it,” I told no one in particular, Gayle being off looking for a sweater and the dog absorbed in a deep doggy-bag deprived sulk.
Checking our furnace is similar to checking on the Titanic — the real challenge is in the getting to it. Attached, as it is, to a spaghetti of pipes, ducts and wiring, the furnace is one of those eminently stationary objects that just invite somewhat more movable stuff
to be moved in around it. Since this particular furnace has stayed in exactly the same place for the 20 or
so years we’ve owned it,
the accumulation of Christmas decorations, old magazines and cartons of stuff too good to throw, not good enough to use and too embarrassing to give away that has grown up around it is substantial, and, save for minor adjustments to allow for the semi-annual changing of the filter, long untouched. But by stacking a four-year collection of Soviet Life and a carton of saucers, coffee cups and serving pieces from three otherwise decimated dinnerware sets atop a teetering pile of half-empty paint cans and shoving EJ’s old headboard and Tonka truck collection hard up along the water heater, I cleared floor space sufficient to shuffle and rearrange box fans, fake fir trees and a 17-year-old ice cream freezer still in the original carton to the extent that I could open a clear passage from the foot of the stair to all main power controls and access panels.
Save for one small factor, I was ready to fix a furnace. Only one thing was stopping me: A nearly absolute lack of knowledge.
Behind the friendly beige-painted sheet metal, the look of the thing was ominous — various dusty, industrial-strength electronic components interconnected by cobwebs and multi-colored wires. The apparatus snapped and clicked and whirred and roared as switches switched, relays relayed, fans fanned, igniters ignited. But no flame flamed. Which triggered the reset, which sent the cycle to repeat and repeat, with unrelenting futility.
I reached for the main switch and shut ’er down and went upstairs to report on the situation. It was either on the fritz or on the blink — I didn’t have the tester to determine which.
Thus our options were limited. Short of building a campfire in the living room n something we hadn’t even allowed the kids to do during their wildest sleepovers — it appeared there was no option but to call in trained reinforcements, which we resolved to do.
In the morning. After all, outdoors it was far from wintry — there’d be no tall tales of waking up to find the water frozen in the chamber pot, even if we could come up with a chamber pot to tell such tales about. It was just damp and chilly. So we hauled out an extra blanket, encouraged the dog to sleep by our feet, pulled the comforter up around our noses and for the first time on a Sunday night, had reason to look forward to Monday morning.
A 350 degree oven with a small oscillating fan made the kitchen habitable by breakfast time, and shortly thereafter, I placed a call to Bob who sent Bill over with a toolbox full of tools and a truck full of parts and the assurance there was nothing wrong with my central heater that a little skill, understanding and my Mastercard number couldn’t fix quite readily.
They’re talking about snow tonight and continued chilly weather all week — but not inside my house.
Unless I forget to pay the gas bill…
Contact Jerome Christenson at jchristenson@winona
dailynews.com or 453-3522.
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