Cold Wars

So, for those who might have noticed my absence this past week or so, I didn’t fall off the planet, or lose interest in all the goings on here. I have been fighting my own version of the cold war.

I woke up around noon last wednesday, after three hours sleep and thought, “Why is it so cold?” Short answer – frozen baseboard. The north side of my house takes a beating every winter. This time the old stone foundation had a few new chinks, as the creaky old beast settled and the whipping wind in my cellar brought temps down to 28 degrees.

I cranked up the heat, which normally will get the north side to thaw and spent the next couple of hours stuffing up all the small holes and drafts I could find. Plastic bags and tablecloths were tacked up to cut down the drafts. It seemed better.

It wasn’t. Frozen baseboard was followed by frozen water pipes. In spite of having run the water frequently, I wasn’t bright enough to just keep it running. Silly me. I had barely stopped to relax for a bit when my daughter came to tell me that the kitchen sink didn’t work. Or the bathroom.

I ran down to my local hardware store and bought a lovely kerosene heater. $300 and two hours later, the water pipes were running, but the baseboard was still in sad shape. Still, we had heat in the south side of the house, though even with the electric heaters going, in the warmest room it was only 58-60 degrees. But better times were coming. The kerosene heater would get that basement temperature up and it would all thaw out.

Wrong. The God of Cold had it in for me. The kerosene heater crapped out after a few hours. A sudden silence alerted me to the fact that the jet rocket in my basement wasn’t running any more. Back down I went, flicked the switch. We had liftoff. I stood there and watched the line rise on my thermometer then headed back upstairs to huddle under a blanket with my naked dogs.

Ten minutes later, silence.

The rest of the night was spent running up and down the stairs, flicking the switch, up to the kitchen making sure the trickle of water in the sink was still going, back to the bathroom, sink and tub running, a layer of ice forming in my bathtub, telling me things were NOT good.

The manual for the heater was very helpful. It talked about pressure, and adjusting it by turning a screw. Yes, I did that, though it didn’t help. And elsewhere in the manual it had a troubleshooting guide that listed what would cause the heater to keep shutting down. All the options listed major parts that needed to be replaced.

I tried to go on the internet, hoping there would be guidance to be found there, on what I might do to get the heater running well. But at 46 degrees in my bedroom, the computer was not happy and would not connect to the internet.

Around 4AM dark grey smoke started billowing out the back of the heater. Clearly there was nothing to be done to resuscitate my nearly new $300 heater.

8AM finally came, and back to the hardware store. No problem, we’ll make good they said, but first they smiled and dialed the company rep, who asked me questions about how many turns of the screw I had done.

“What?” I said, “It was 3 o’clock in the morning. You think I was counting turns of a screw? Did your manuel SAY how many turns of the screw were needed, or that I SHOULD be counting turns?” I was, by this point, just a bit short with him.

He backed right off, but I agreed I would go back and double check to make sure I had turned the right screw. The one with the hole, not just the straight notch.

Back home I grabbed my flashlight and screwdriver, ready to inspect screw heads, hoping against hope it would be an easy fix. When I shined the light I saw the screw with the straight notch. Good. I had been turning the right one. But the right one was looking a little funny now, like metal curlicues on the head, instead of the straight notch with the hole in the middle. I touched it with my screwdriver and the whole screw disintegrated – cooked by the heat that had been generated. At this point I was just thankful the damned thing hadn’t burned my whole house down.

Back to the hardware store. Money refunded, graciously. They would send a man over to drain the kerosene from the heater and remove it from my basement. He arrived not long after I got home, armed with a siphon the diameter of a ballpoint pen. Two hours of crouching down in my 28 degree basement,  trying to siphon four gallons of gas through a 7 foot straw, we finally succeeded in draining enough kerosene off to get the heater out without spilling fuel all through my house.

Now it’s 12:30. I decide maybe we can resurrect the old propane heater in the basement. I call my local fuel company. At 4PM they deliver propane. I have amused myself with running taps and continuing to do miniscule loads of laundry to keep laundry room pipes from freezing. Now I go to have more fun with heating units. An hour and a half later, I still have not had luck in getting the propane heater to run.

I call the emergency repair service. By 6:30PM, after disassembling the thing, he gets the propane heater to run. At this point, I haven’t slept since I got up at noon on Wedsneday. Now it’s Friday night and I’m looking at going in to work at 10PM. I try to call out, since three nights with no sleep will not a nifty employee make. But no, they wouldn’t hear of it. It was fine if I was on zombie mode. I was a warm body. I needed to be there.

At this point, the propane heater had thawed everything out, water was running, north side baseboard was heating. Even the layer of ice in my bathtub was melted. So I showered, dressed and headed out to work.

I got home the next morning, happy to see my house was warm. Exhausted, I fell into bed. At 2PM a knock on the front door woke me. They had sent someone from work to let me know I could stay home that night. How nice. They woke me up to tell me that. But still. Life was good. The house was warm.

I stayed up for a bit, then back to bed. I slept for 18 hours and woke up and thought, “Why is it so cold?”

Yes, folks. It all froze again. I had one room with heat. At this point I just sat down and cried. Ten minutes of feeling sorry for myself and then back at it. On the phone to the heating repair service (which I probably should have done at the start of all this). Four servicemen showed up. A short time later, after using this nifty little gadget that gave them temperature readings, they determined I had frozen baseboard. Gee, ya think?

They lugged a huge propane tank into the basement, hooked it to a ginormous blower. Then told me I had to basically move every stick of furniture in the house so they could disassemble my baseboards and take blow torches to them.

A couple of hours later, thankful that they had not ignited my house on fire with the cavalier way they waved those torches around, I finally had heat. My whole house was torn apart, but my baseboard was splendid. Thank you very much.

I asked what I could do to prevent this happening again. “Move to Mexico,” they told me. “I hear it’s about 90 degrees there now.”

They did suggest spray foam insulation in those little cans. So off to the hardware store, again, for a bunch of cans of that stuff and tarps to attach to the outside of my house to cut down the wind.

So now, so far, it’s warm. Of course it got up to 55 degrees yesterday. Naturally.

There’s a couple of lessons in here somewhere. One – don’t buy old farmhouses. Two – especially in the state of Maine. Three – If you’re foolish enough to ignore one and two, rip out the baseboard heating in favor of just about any other choice. And four, just cut to the chase and call the damned repair guys. Even if you DO have to sell your first born on ebay to pay the bill.