So yeah. In essence, I am presently living above a large, marginally stable shrapnel bomb.
Amongst other gongshows that have happened with this house, the furnace has been giving us problems. It documents itself as being due to be cleaned in 2002. I am uncertain of the last time it was inspected. Other stickers of last work done plastered to it go back as far as 1981. I do not pretend to be a furnace expert (or to know anything at all about them, really), but I am fairly certain four years is a long time for a furnace to be overdue for cleaning.
My landlady is an idiot. She lives in a dream world, one where pilot lights don't go out, where furnaces can't produce carbon monoxide when not properly maintained, where parts don't wear out and break with time, and where filters aren't necessary. She encouraged me, rather prickishly I might add, to just turn the damn thing on, adamantly refusing to even entertain the notion of having it looked at, citing work done on it last year as evidence that it must be fine. No documentation could be produced to support these claims of work, of course. The fucking thing didn't even have a filter in it. And, for those of you who might be reading this and don't live in this city, it has been kind of cold and snowy lately. My house has not been nice to live in with no heat.
Today, we finally got filters out of her, installed them, and went to turn the furnace on. The pilot light was out, of course, despite repeated assurances that it would be no worry. After some time tinkering with it, we couldn't figure out how the hell to get it lit. So we called the landlady. After several hours she bothered to return my call. After some further time tinkering with it, she couldn't figure out how the hell to get it lit. So, she called a furnace tech. And it's a fucking good thing it came to that.
Turns out the furnace has a gas leak. And the reason it was so hard to get the gas going was because it was turned off with an eye towards keeping it that way. It won't turn off now. Or even slow down. It's getting kind of warm in here as I write this, except we can't turn the furnace off because the gas control valve is broken. If the pilot goes, the basement fills with gas. Did I mention the dude that sleeps down there? Yeah. Not me thankfully, but he's a good sort. I'd rather not see him gassed to death. Still, at least we know this, so we won't be unwittingly sending some poor sap downstairs to die in a fiery explosion in an attempt to relight it when it inevitably goes out sometime, as we otherwise would have been.
Furnace repair guy tomorrow.
Restless sleep now.
yrs,
tensix
Amongst other gongshows that have happened with this house, the furnace has been giving us problems. It documents itself as being due to be cleaned in 2002. I am uncertain of the last time it was inspected. Other stickers of last work done plastered to it go back as far as 1981. I do not pretend to be a furnace expert (or to know anything at all about them, really), but I am fairly certain four years is a long time for a furnace to be overdue for cleaning.
My landlady is an idiot. She lives in a dream world, one where pilot lights don't go out, where furnaces can't produce carbon monoxide when not properly maintained, where parts don't wear out and break with time, and where filters aren't necessary. She encouraged me, rather prickishly I might add, to just turn the damn thing on, adamantly refusing to even entertain the notion of having it looked at, citing work done on it last year as evidence that it must be fine. No documentation could be produced to support these claims of work, of course. The fucking thing didn't even have a filter in it. And, for those of you who might be reading this and don't live in this city, it has been kind of cold and snowy lately. My house has not been nice to live in with no heat.
Today, we finally got filters out of her, installed them, and went to turn the furnace on. The pilot light was out, of course, despite repeated assurances that it would be no worry. After some time tinkering with it, we couldn't figure out how the hell to get it lit. So we called the landlady. After several hours she bothered to return my call. After some further time tinkering with it, she couldn't figure out how the hell to get it lit. So, she called a furnace tech. And it's a fucking good thing it came to that.
Turns out the furnace has a gas leak. And the reason it was so hard to get the gas going was because it was turned off with an eye towards keeping it that way. It won't turn off now. Or even slow down. It's getting kind of warm in here as I write this, except we can't turn the furnace off because the gas control valve is broken. If the pilot goes, the basement fills with gas. Did I mention the dude that sleeps down there? Yeah. Not me thankfully, but he's a good sort. I'd rather not see him gassed to death. Still, at least we know this, so we won't be unwittingly sending some poor sap downstairs to die in a fiery explosion in an attempt to relight it when it inevitably goes out sometime, as we otherwise would have been.
Furnace repair guy tomorrow.
Restless sleep now.
yrs,
tensix