Baby, It's Cold.... Inside

We returned from a weekend at my father's to a cold house. This isn't too unusual, because the house is almost always cold. Except for those few days of the year when it is unbearably hot. Only a few, in spite of the heat and humidity that are possible around here, which is probably how we continue to survive without central air.

So the house was cold, but that was in comparison to the car, which was so warm with 5 people and 4 dogs in it that we had to turn on the actual air conditioning about 2 hours into the trip lest Universe Man get carsick. Something we would really much rather avoid.

After a while, I'm still feeling cold and realizing that even though it's during the day, it's the weekend, so really, the house should be warmer. I check the thermostat in the kitchen, which appears not to be functioning. This isn't too worrisome since this thermostat is known to be.... a little quirky, and you can fix that with an override, or if that fails, some begging. (To be fair, given that the thermostat has been replaced twice, it is probably just fine and dandy and it is something in the wiring somewhere that is temperamental, but we live with it.)

I wander into the family room and look at that thermostat. Um.... room temperature is several degrees below set temperature. That's not good. I confer with the LSH. The good news is that the basement is not flooded. The bad news is that the thing which heats the house (AKA a "boiler") is not doing it's job. At all. As in, it's not even on. Uh oh.

LSH flicks the emergency oil shut-off. No dice. He pushes the reset button on the boiler itself. Boiler turns back on. Water in the system starts to heat up. Checks a few minutes later. Boiler has shut itself off. Tentative diagnosis: control system (or some part of it) fried.

What I'm wondering is, karmically speaking, what did we do to deserve this? We already had an appointment to have the boiler replaced. On Tuesday. When the heating guys came for their annual "checking to make sure that nothing will blow up, catch up fire, asphyxiate you, or flood the basement," they decreed that, for a variety of reasons, we needed a new boiler. But it wasn't an emergency -- sometime this winter, better sooner than later, but it was a matter of months and not weeks.

Turns out they were wrong. The temperature in the house is 63 F and dropping. It's going to be a very cold couple of days.

The good news is that the hot water still works, and so do the oven and the stove. I'm thinking of running a load of laundry just because the dryer generates some waste heat. And it's a school day tomorrow, so it'll just be me freezing my nose off. Unless I decide to decamp for warmer climes. Possibly the library. Probably somewhere with coffee.