New Heat

We replaced the furnace last week. Well, other people replaced the furnace. We just told them to do that, and paid them for doing so. It counts.

We’ve been talking about this for the better part of a decade now. The old furnace came with the house in 1996, and from what the various service people have told us it was moved there when the house got moved to its current site in 1992 or so. The furnace itself was originally installed in 1986. It was a reliable and efficient furnace – a pulse furnace, which is a design with essentially no moving pieces to wear out – but they stopped making parts for it sometime during the Obama Administration and the last time the repair guy came out he told us that even the parts that they could jury-rig into place were getting scarce.

So it was time.

Kind of a shame, really, since it was working just fine. But it would do that until it stopped and when it stopped we’d need the new one in a hurry and it’s just best to do this on your schedule rather than the furnace’s schedule.

This is why we ended up replacing the AC unit at the same time. The guy who last serviced it, back in September, looked at it and said, carefully, “Yeah, that will probably start up in the spring.” It was also here when we moved in back in 1996, so it too owed us nothing.

Of course, getting a new furnace means clearing a path to the old one through the stuff in the basement, which is a problem. There’s a lot of stuff down there. My parents’ stuff. Kim’s dad’s stuff. Our various grandparents’ stuff. Stuff we had before we got married. Stuff we acquired afterward. Kid stuff. Project stuff. A wide assortment of tools that we have been threatening to organize since at least 2017. Stuff.

Fortunately the stuff is arranged in a fairly modular way and the furnace is not far from the stairs, so clearing a path was not all that intensive. But still. There was archeology.

Two guys showed up on Wednesday morning with a truck full of parts and equipment and set to work. I watched for a little while because it was interesting, but after a bit you could tell they just wanted to get on with things without the Homeowner staring at them so I retreated to my office to stare forlornly at my grading without actually doing any of it before switching gears and plinking around the web for a while. It was technically a holiday, after all, since none of the various campuses I work for held classes that day.

It was also a fairly warm day, so keeping the heat off for a morning caused no issues. I can’t imagine trying to do this in -20F weather. Yeah, our schedule, not the furnace’s.

Eventually they finished, cleared off all the old equipment, and headed off with a fairly large check in my handwriting because for some reason my winning smile was not payment enough. I have no idea why other than the fact that it has taken me three tries to type this without falling over sideways laughing.

The new furnace works pretty well – it’s quieter and more efficient than the old one, and it provides better heat to the far reaches of the house as well. I have no idea how the new thermostat works, but they did leave a manual that I swear I will read someday. Given that it is November we haven’t tried the AC yet, but with climate change barreling down it’s entirely possible that someday we will have to do that.

Here’s to warmth in the winter.