Murphy's Law of furnaces

A furnace will break on the coldest day possible, when your housecoat is in the basement two floors away.


We awoke this morning to an icy cold house. We spent last night paring down everything in the basement, which included carpeting and underpad that had seen better days. Fun, smelly times, lemme tell ya. There was a mound of garbage in front of our house for them to pick up this morning that could have probably attracted greenpeace protesters had they had more notice. Last night with the windchill it was about -25 with the wind blowing at 33km/hour and gusting much faster. Brrr! We carried tonnes of stuff from the basement to the curb in that weather, so when we finally got to bed, we slept like the dead.

This morning, though, we awoke to a virtual winter wonderland. Inside the house.

So, being the good and brave husband he is, Dave ventured forth out of the warm bed and fiddled with the furnace and got it to work momentarily but his success was short lived. We both got dressed and ready for work in a house that was 7 degrees Celcius this morning (that'd be 44 degrees for you yanks), ran hot water through the pipes to prevent them from freezing while we were at work and flung myself out the door to work.

The repair dude came by this afternoon and apparently some part had gone, and, had we not signed up for what I believe called a "stupid waste of money warranty protection program that we'll never freaking use" we'd have been out $449 for the part plus labour, and probably some "show up to your house" fee, and quite probably our first born.

As it was the repairs were free on account of said stupid warranty plan and the house is slowly but surely warming up. Except my toes which remain like little stumps of ice.