It finally feels like Autumn is here. There is a crisp chill to the air. Trees are changing color. Leaves are falling. And once again I have no heat.
Well that's a bit of an exaggeration. I do have heat, it just hasn't really been working in the sort of automated fashion that so many people are so familiar with these days. Normally you set the temperature at the thermostat, walk away and the magic of technology takes over and keeps things ticking along at the correct temp. Not so at Windemere. As temperatures have begun to dip at night it was finally time to fire up the old boiler and begin to think about heating the house. I've been putting this off as long as possible. Mostly because heat seems like such an expensive endeavour and blankets and shivering are so cheap. But my will was finally worn down and I decided to turn the thermostat up from sub-zero to a reasonably comfortable temperature range normally associated with "room temperature".
But nothing happened. So I turned the thermostat up a bit further. Nothing. 75 degrees. Nothing. 85 degrees. Nothing. Siiiggghh.... Cursing and grumbling I headed down to the basement to threaten the boiler. The last time I went through this the problem was with the automatic flue damper not opening as it should. But this time the damper was open. So I poked and prodded and shivered and eventually found a combination of connections that I could jump together to get the boiler to fire up. And with a resounding and satisfying woomp and thud the boiler fired to life. Yay, heat.
In my smug naiveté I went to bed knowing that I would soon be basking in the glowing warmth of a nice warm home. You know the saying be careful what you wish for? Yeah, life has a way of coming and biting you on the ass hard when you start "basking" overmuch.
This particular adventure started with me walking into the house to find it was only about 55 degrees. By about 5am the temperature in the house had skyrocketd up to over 80 degrees. Evidently the magic electrical solution I had cobbled together in the basement permanently wired the boiler to ON. Ignoring any prudent advice it might have been receiving from the thermostat, the boiler pressed on throwing caution to the wind and continuing to boil away. In fact, by the time I woke up bathed in sweat from the heatwave and stumbled downstairs to get things turned off, the boiler had managed to get the water up to well over 200 degrees. Oops.
But all is now well. Another water cooler session with the HVAC guy at work and I've now got the faulty flue damper out of the loop and the heat here is working as it should.
For now...