Today's foibles

[soc_puppet]

I was originally scheduled to work today, but my boss texted me last night to say that the roads are still horrible, please stay home, she's staying over at the hotel anyway and has things covered. And, well, I'm not going to argue very hard over getting to sleep in a few extra hours and not having to brave the weather before noon.

Of course, when I got upstairs this morning, I regretted not fighting that a bit harder. Turns out that our furnace had gone out, probably some time overnight, and the ambient temperature inside was 60°F and falling. Not the worst, except that it was also -13°F outside, and not liable to get warmer by more than a few degrees all day.

Unfortunately, beyond checking the circuit breakers, I was unable to do much about the furnace myself, and had to wait about an hour until my parents got back from mass. Dad was able to locate the switch that was supposed to restart the furnace, but flipping it didn't end up helping very much, so I turned to the internet for answers. Eventually I found a page that listed some of the various reasons our brand of furnace might be having trouble starting, looked over the ones that would be easiest for me to assess and/or personally fix, and got to it.

Yeah, turns out that when Dad changed the filter about a month ago? Rather than finding out what size filter we use and seeing if we actually had any, then going to buy one when we didn't, he used a 20"x20" I had misplaced when making a Corsi-Rosenthal cube. Meanwhile, the most recent size of filter we had used before that was 16"x 24", and even that was technically a little bit the wrong size. The 20"x20" was scrunched in there horribly, and honestly it's kinda amazing it did its job as long as it did.

I nipped out to the store without checking the actual size myself, because apparently that's just the kind of day it was going to be, but at least I remembered the size of the one that mostly fit. That size wasn't available in the store brand, or I would have bought a couple other sizes to experiment with, but it did at least do the trick: Between three and four hours after I first noticed that our furnace wasn't working, it was back to heating the house.

Of course, once the house was more-or-less back to prescribed temperature and I'd triumphantly slacked off (read: played Pokémon Go) for a few hours, I decided I may as well poke around and see if I could find out what size of furnace filter we actually do need. Unfortunately, not only did I not find the information, but I didn't put the furnace's upper door(?) on quite right, and it fell over and broke a narrow PVC pipe that's right in front of the furnace for some reason, and now we have a minor plumbing thing to worry about instead. Like, I got it duct taped back together, and it's mostly okay, but it does have a steady drip going, so that's one more thing to worry about right now, I suppose. Hopefully I have at least prevented some minor basement flooding for the time being.

Comments

[gwydion]

I hope tomorrow is better.

[soc_puppet]

Well. Uh. I got to see my brother and elder nibling on the 15th, at least? And my parents bought me lunch. So that was nice.

[oracne]

Brrrrrrrrrr. I hope the plumbing isn't too bad.

[soc_puppet]

There's a very minor but persistent drip. Maybe a cup of water a day? I feel reasonably safe in putting it off until we get the furnace taken care of, at least. ...Aside from how the tubing is partly blocking the furnace, that is.

[oracne]

Yeah, our dining room radiators aren't working, but we're depending on the warmer air from the living room reaching in there, because the boiler really needs replacement and can't handle anything done to it.

GIP

[jesse_the_k]

You + furnace = cursed relationship

[soc_puppet]

Clearly!