January 16 Day 1409: Defeating the Cold

Starting last Friday, the Pacific Northwest was in a bit of a deep freeze. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem—but our furnace stopped working.

Friday night the inside temperature was 54 degrees. By Saturday morning it had dropped to 44 degrees. I would have gotten the problem addressed immediately except my husband and I were to travel to Southern California to visit his ailing brother. Family comes first. Yet it didn’t stop me from worry about further temperature decreases and the potential of frozen pipes.

We returned home Sunday night to 38 degrees inside—still twenty degrees higher than the outside temperatures but singularly unpleasant. I brought down a space heater for the bedroom, piled blankets on the bed, and crawled under the covers for the night. It barely took the edge off the unpleasantness.

I left emergency messages at HVAC companies and hoped for a quick response. Apparently the rest of the PNW was having issues with their furnaces too and replies were not as rapid as I would have liked.

Long story short—no one returned my calls (I kept making more) on MLK day. But today, I managed to speak with not one, but two different companies. The soonest service appointment I could book was 10 days out. The other company was more promising and sent me information to check for a frozen drain line on the condensation pump. If that was the problem they gave suggestions for how to thaw the line with instructions to call back for an appointment (to be later in this week) if it didn’t work.

I checked the line. It didn’t seem frozen to me on the inside. However the line exits the house under the side deck and didn’t want to crawl under the deck in the dark to check from that side.

So I investigated the automatic condensate pump instead. The pump’s reservoir was full of warm water. I decided to remove it using a turkey baster. Once the water level was low enough, the furnace kicked on. I kept manually emptying the reservoir just to heat the house a few degrees.

I investigated the drain line again and decided to place chemical hand/foot warmers where it exited the basement to the exterior. Thirty minutes later everything was working fine. It’s been a few hours since “the fix.” The furnace is still working and has raised the temperature to 61 degrees so far. It’s practically back to normal.

Any day when a problem gets fixed is a good day. And I will never take heat for granted ever again.