I woke up this morning around 5am and noticed something was wrong – NO HEAT!
Overnight, we had quite a snow storm (it’s still snowing, actually). These things never happen on mild-weathered days.
Not wanting to cause mass-panic, I put an extra blanket on each kid and let them sleep.
It was cold but bearable, so I waited till 8am to call the repairman.
Despite the snowy roads, the repairman was here within an hour. He flushed out the clogged hoses that circulate the water in our radiators through the boiler and then waited for the water to heat and the radiators began to warm.
This isn’t the first time that it was clogged.
A year a ago last week, we had the same thing happen.
Tom was in Japan. It was below freezing outside and very windy.
The children and I had been visiting at my in-laws and we came home around 10pm. After getting the kids in bed, I sat down to go over the bills and realized it was quite cold!
I tried to figure it out for about an hour. I replaced the batteries in the thermostat for good measure, checked to make sure all the switches were “on” and bled the air in the radiators.
I couldn’t think of anything else I could do on my own to fix the problem and finally called the the repairman at 11:30pm.
He came over and it took about three hours to fix. The clog was in a little hidden hose and was very hard to find.
When he found it, he emptied the debris, which was quite substantial compared to this year’s, into my utility sink.
The next afternoon, I was rinsing out the sink and the water wasn’t draining. The debris wouldn’t “tap out” of the strainer into the trash. I had to clean it out by hand.
I pinched the slimy blackness between my fingers. It crunched.
Instantly, I realized what it was: two dead mouse skeletons in a compacted furry dirty mush. Ooo… I shudder just thinking about it. I picked the little bones out of the holes in the strainer and then bleached my hands. I avoided eating finger food for a while after that!
Well, I’m praising God the house is warming up. Now it’s time to go play in the snow!
If anyone in eastern Pennsylvania is looking for a heating and air conditioning company (they both install systems and repair them), I recommend Absolute Heating & Cooling in Parkesburg. Both times we called them, they were prompt when called and tenacious until the job was complete. The employees are professional and kind. Today, the guy didn’t seem to mind that the children sat on the steps and watched him while he worked. He answered all their questions about the heater, and even laughed at the 20 “Why did the chicken cross the road?” joke variations they told him.
Of course, I was totally useless. I couldn’t even figure out which was the gas line and which was the water line.
He recommended the procedure should be done one per year before the winter, so we’ll be adding “drain and bleed the radiators” to our yearly winter checklist.
So, on Feb. 27th – just a few days later – our heat went out again! This time, it was a broken igniter. Once again we called Absolute and they sent a guy out within 30 minutes. He quickly diagnosed the problem and even had the part on his truck. We had our heat up and running in an hour. He even waived the cost of labor, since we had just had work done a few days before, and just charged us for the part. We’re very thankful!