A Shiver Up My Spine (Not the Good Kind)

Winter is making its second grand entrance in less than a week here along the Lake Erie shore. It's been snowing for at least 24 hours straight, with a nasty wind averaging at least 35 mph. The wind has a good side: it blows the snow off our driveway as fast as it can fall, so I haven't had to do any shoveling. However, the downside is that the wind chill factor is about -11 F. Though our house is fairly new and holds heat well, that wind just seemed to penetrate its icy fingers right through our walls earlier today.

Throughout the morning, as I was reviewing my notes for my Financial Management final, the room seemed to be getting colder and colder. I was already wearing my L. L. Bean fleece pj's, which are usually toasty enough to be more than adequate when I bump the heat up to 66, as I often do when I'm home during the day. But my hands were icy and I couldn't feel my toes even with socks on.

So I put on my heavy robe over the pj's and a second layer of socks before I took the exam. Gotta love those online classes on a day like this! After acing the exam (yes!) and farting around on my favorite websites for a while, I thought, hey, I'll do a cardio workout--that ought to warm me up. I opened the bedroom door to get my workout wear and was practically bowled over by the crypt-like draft blasting out of there. The thermometer said 52 degrees! It's always freezing in there during the winter, especially on windy days, but this was lower than I'd ever seen it.

I went downstairs to check the thermostat: 60 degrees. That's funny, I thought. It seems like the furnace isn't even on. I went down to the utility room, and sure enough, it was eerily quiet. My mind flashed back to a time in the summer when the air conditioning seemed to be malfunctioning, and wouldn't respond no matter what we did. It turned out that Mouchie the cat had bumped the master switch to the "off" position hours before. (I really wonder who thought it was a good idea to install it 2 feet above the floor level.)

Today, the switch was in its usual "up" position, but I thought, maybe turning it off and on will "reboot" the furnace. I did that, and, dramatically, the furnace roared to life, followed by the fan. I had fixed it! That's a little weird, but whatever. And then, exactly 15 minutes later, it stopped. All afternoon, I kept running down there to reboot it, which brought the house to an anemic 61 degrees. I had the gas fireplace on for about 7 hours, which at least kept the family room warm, but I knew something was seriously wrong. The bedroom was now down to a bone-chilling 45 degrees! How on earth were we going to sleep tonight?

When Paul got home, we looked up furnace troubleshooting tips online. We looked up the phone number of the heating and cooling company that does our maintenance in case we had to call them tomorrow. He went outside into the arctic blast with a flashlight to see if the outside vent was coated in ice or something--nope. It just kept getting colder and colder. We started retreating into ourselves like turtles. Well, I did, anyway.

Paul finally started checking the tubes that vented water from the humidifier, after jostling one around, water just started gushing from it, as if it had been pent up in a reservoir. It had been pinched near the bottom, leaving the water nowhere to go. After one false cycle, the furnace has been functioning normally for an hour and a half now. I think (hope) he solved the problem.

Here's what we think happened. Although Mouchie hadn't flipped the master switch this time, the chain of events that led up to this is still his fault. About 3 weeks ago, when I was eating my lunch at home, I heard a huge crashing noise, followed by the pinging of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tiny pebble-like objects. Something was clearly amiss down in the utility room.

As I came down the stairs, the overpowering smell of dry catfood overwhelmed me. Mouchie, hiding behind the couch in full freak-out mode, shot up the stairs as soon as he saw me. I had a few choice words upon entering the room. He had knocked over a newly-opened 15-pound bag of dry cat food from the top shelf. It weighed more than he did--don't ask me how he had the strength--and absolutely exploded upon impact dumping little pellets of cat food everywhere. And I mean everywhere. All over the top of the washing machine and dryer. behind them. Inside them, even though their doors weren't open. On top of (and in) the litter box. (Guess I should be thankful it had a cover over it.) In every dust-bunny- and cobweb-infested nook and cranny in the entire room. Including, of course, all of the nooks and crannies of the furnace and its myriad pipes and tubes.

I was on my hands and knees for at least a half and hour with the hand broom and dustpan getting it all. We had had ants before (who love dry cat food), so I made an effort to get every last kibble. It was like hunting for cockroaches; you see one, you know there are 10,000 more just out of plain sight. Honestly, that's what I was thinking when I pulled the flimsy little white pipes aside only to see at least 200+ kibbles way under there. I had to get them all! As you can imagine, I was kind of pissed at this point, and I took it out on those poor pipes, shoving their ends back in their little hole none too carefully.

Fast forward to today, the first day it was cold enough for the furnace to be on continuously for hours and hours at a time. The water from the humidifier just couldn't drain fast enough, and when its reservoir stayed full, it automatically shut off the furnace. Now that it can drain, problem solved. It sure is a relief that we (and our pipes!) won't freeze overnight, and that we are spared the ordeal of an emergency service call on a day that I'm sure plenty of others would be ahead of us in line.