Is it getting warm in here?
In the midst of all the basement planning, scheduling, and organizing, one morning I noticed that the furnace was running, but the outside fan was not. This was one of those times where my brain had probably been nudging me for days that something was different, but it took awhile for those thoughts to rise to the top of the list of things to pay attention to.
After a couple visits from HVAC professionals (Oh, how I miss my brother and his HVAC company in Iowa.), consensus was reached: The HVAC system might be able to be repaired, but, and this was a large but, due to changes in 2020 the type of freon it used would no longer be available, so it would not be able to be repaired after that. In addition, there was one obvious problem with it, but there was another issue that couldn’t be diagnosed until the initial issue was fixed, making it unclear how much the repair was going to be. And the initial repair was not inexpensive.
I sat with this information for a couple weeks. I reviewed the bids and went over our budget with Buds. We had some lovely, mild days during this time, which allowed us to turn off the system entirely, but the rest of the time we were running on “emergency heat” which doesn’t actually mean anything to me, but sounds scary and expensive. Plus, we were keeping the house at 61 degrees. For those with poor finger and toe circulation, that means toes of about 50 degrees. Ask my spouse; I’m only slightly exaggerating.
Since going without a way to heat and cool the house isn’t really an option, I called up my new buddy David from Energy Masters. He had done work for us at a different location, and I really liked his approach, his online reviews, and his price. Plus I’m a fan of supporting family-owned, small businesses for obvious reasons.
David and Keith installed our new system yesterday. Took them about 4 hours and last night we were at a comfortable 64 degrees. They had set the unit to 68 degrees, which quickly got too hot!
As Buds keeps reminding me, we’re rebuilding this house from the inside out so we can live here happily forever. At the very least we’ll be warm.
