The Day the Furnace Died

We noticed yesterday that the furnace was making a knocking sound, so decided to have it serviced. Turned out to be a minor thing, something about a water valve. At 4:30 this morning, I was awoken (as if I need one more thing waking me up...) by the sound of the furnace trying over and over in vain to start. I walked to the stairs to be greeted by the strong smell of oil burning. Great. I hit the emergency shut off switch, made sure all the carbon monoxide alarms were in working order, looked at the thermometer to note that it was at that time -19 degrees F out. Decided that we weren't in danger of carbon monoxide poisoning at that point and that probably snuggled under the already warm covers was the best place to be. At 5:30, I got up and called the people that serviced the furnace to tell them of the problem, noting that it had dropped 3 degrees in the house in the hour the heat was off. Someone came out promptly, found what he thought was a minor problem and fixed it in no time.

Once Dave got home from his call shift at the hospital- and why does this stuff always happen when he's on call, by the way?!- we discussed at and decided that our 35 year old furnace was probably giving us warning signs of imminent death. What to do when faced with unexpectedly spending $5-6,000 on a new furnace? Why, go have breakfast, of course! We came back, then I decided to make a trip to the library. When we arrived home an hour later, the house was 62 degrees, despite the fact that the thermostat was set on 70. Not good. Nor was the fact there was no hot water.

So, the new furnace will be installed on Monday. They were kind enough to do a patch-up job to get us through the weekend so we didn't have to pay the emergency installation fee. So now we just have to hope it actually gets us through the weekend. At least it isn't supposed to be quite as cold over the next few days.

Still, it would be a lot more fun to spend that money- not that we really have it- on a fun trip to say Hawaii or something. It reminds me of a song by the Bare Naked Ladies "It's the perfect time of year, somewhere far away from here..."