Winter Camping at Our House

Dear George, 

The other day we carried some kitchen stuff down to store in the basement, and Katja alertly spotted a pool of water underneath our furnace boiler.  That seemed abnormal so we called the furnace people, and they sent Jason over later in the day.  After checking it out, he came upstairs with the unpleasant news that the boiler was shot and would have to be replaced.  He added that the broken unit was giving off carbon monoxide and that we should turn it off.  Carbon monoxide, he reminded us, kills people in their house.  (As we learned later, Jason had had to leave the basement because he couldn’t breathe.)   

A second technician, Joel, came the next day to assess our boiler needs.  By then the temperature in the house had dropped from 70 to 62 (not terrible, but chillier than our preference).  Joel determined that we needed a new boiler that would be about the price of a compact car.  He recommended their top of the line unit which would certainly last twenty years or more.  I thought to myself, “We won’t be in this house (or even on this Earth) twenty years from now,” but Joel was persuasive.  He determined that they would need to order the new boiler from out of town and that it would take at least a week to get it.  Katja, disturbed by the prospect of no heat for a week, said she would just run the old boiler till then.  Joel reminded us that the boiler was spewing out carbon monoxide and that we would die in a day or two. 

After the initial shock wore off, I decided that this could be a fun adventure — sort of like winter camping in our own house.  We went to the mall and purchased a couple of space heaters, one big and one medium.  For all of the immense good that they do, space heaters aren’t that expensive — $50 and $100.   The big one kept our bedroom at a cozy 70 degrees last night, and the medium one works excellently in the computer room.  The rest of the house has dropped to 58 and appears to be on a steady decline.  Joel said to call him if our in-house temperature drops below 32 because they will have to come and drain the pipes.  Our weather forecast calls for a low of 27 by Monday.  We won’t die of carbon monoxide (unless Katja secretly turns the heat back on), but there is some risk of being frozen to death.

Love,

Dave