We have heat

Folks, we are feeling mighty fine. We are legit. We live in a house with real heat, because we have a brand new furnace. That's right! Last month, we said "Sayonara" to our 101-year old, original furnace. As much as we are trying to preserve the house, we definitely need to live in a comfortable home and last winter, the space heaters weren't cutting it. In fact, they were tripping all our electrical breakers. Eek! But, how cool that this house has had the same furnace this whole time. They just don't make them like they used to.

Here's a pic of the old guy below. Attached on the top is insulation full of asbestos and there were five metal ducts coming out. One duct was completely turned off because it developed a big split in in sometime over the years before we moved in. Another duct was crunched, allegedly by a home inspector when a previous potential buyer came before us. Anyway, here's the big old boy:



This process started back in June. Of course, when we called the heating and air places to talk about our furnace when it was 105 degrees outside they thought we were cray-cray. There was a reason to get our furnace replaced in the summer, though, we wanted to crank that baby up at the first dip in weather. And, since we live in California, that means a chilly 50 degrees at night. Ha! We are so spoiled when it comes to "cold" weather here.

Anyway, long story even longer. Our County was approved for special financing through our property taxes so I looked into it, contacted an "approved" installer and, well, they sucked. They came to our house, then had to come out again, and again, then gave us a quote for twice as much as the local guys gave us back when we moved in. Not to mention that when I called the potential installer he was so patronizing that I wanted to reach through the phone and slap him. So, back with the local guys and traditional financing (we took out a HELOC because the repairs we are diving into are just, well, more than what we have in the bank and, dammit, we need heat!). So, back to the local guys...They are awesome and local and small and busy. We waited mostly so they could contract with an asbestos remediation company. because OF COURSE we have asbestos surrounding our old furnace.

The day finally came the week of Thanksgiving when it all came out and the new stuff came in. One day, I came home to this blocking the stairway to the basement:
 Then four days later, our basement looked like this:
The picture is deceiving, but it's actually about 1/3 the size of the original furnace. Also, we have a new duct coming out of the very top right corner of the picture because now we have heat in the kitchen, mudroom and 1/2 bathroom. The only issue with the heat in the mudroom and bathroom is that there is NO insulation in that room because it's an old porch. So, we've been keeping the vents closed.

There are two other things about our furnace to mention. One, the old one vented into the chimney and that's against code now. The new furnace vents to the exterior of the house. The second thing, we had it prepped to add an A/C unit (gasp!) at a future date. The Handyman votes for sooner rather than later, but I think we can get by for at least another couple of summers. ;-)

And, of course, having working heat in the house again makes me think of one thing and one thing only.


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