The house on Rusty Hinge Road came with a fairly new gas furnace. It is connected directly to a municipal gas line that lies beneath the pavement on the other side of the chain-link fence.
Last March, Melissa told me that the heater was on the fritz. This was a new experience. With my old oil furnace, I could go down into the cellar and press the button on the red box. If the Gods are in alignment, the problem was fixed.
This gas unit has no such button and unlike the oil variety of yesteryear, there is no international safety orange sticker on the side of the machine displaying the contact telephone number for service.
I called the gas company and after going through a couple menus, got a human on the line who told me that the gas company doesn’t “do that sort of thing” and I should find myself a reliable plumber who specializes in heater repairs.
So I contacted a contractor friend who recommended a plumber buddy, who I called, and that afternoon his truck was at the curb, and he had his nose inside the fallow furnace.
“You burned out the motor,” he told me in very sketchy English. “I will go to my supply house on Monday and get you a price.”
It should come as no surprise that the heater finked out during an early March cold snap and on a Saturday morning so we could plan on pretty much freezing various nether parts off until midweek.
Melissa, the saver, the collector of things, went to the basement and retrieved a couple of electric oil-filled radiators she had bought when she lived out in far more temperate Oakland, California. These portable units served her well in the short, mild winters of the bay area.
“Don’t be silly,” I chided her, “How will these things help us?” This is a big old house and those tiny things are like pebbles in the ocean.”
Unphased by my chiding, Melissa pluged them in and in a couple of hours, with the aid of some baffling laws of physics, the oil-filled electric radiators had transformed a sizable portion of the chill in the house to a comfortable level.
“I think it’s actually warmer than our furnace,” I remember thinking as my fingers thawed and I was able to type again.
On Monday, I called the plumber. He let me know that his supplier not only did not have the motor BUT they could not get one.
“It’s discontinued.” Discontinued?
He suggested I go online.
I did and after poking around for part numbers, model numbers and serial numbers, I located a brand new, non-returnable part at a warehouse somewhere in Illinois. I had it Fedex-ed out to me at breathtaking expense, and it arrived on my frozen porch by the end of the week.
Deciding that he was kind of flaky, I fired the plumber. Ultimately, I ended up calling the number on the side of a truck, “Demitri Plumbing and (more importantly) Heating.” They were able to fit me into their schedule that day.
A pleasant gentleman with a baseball cap and his name (not Demitri) embroidered on his pocket brought his tools in from the cold and in 10 minutes our house was vibrating and getting warmer.
“I guess I didn’t need that non-returnable motor after all.” I said.
“It was simply a dingus schnobber,” the technician explained, adding numbers up on an invoice. Of course it wasn’t really a “dingus schnobber” that needed tweaking -- it was something equally as unfamiliar to my vocabulary.
“It happens all the time,” the kindly technician explained, “It’s the first thing I always check.” I wrote out a big check and handed it to my new friend.
“Your plumber should have known that much.”
“You know anybody that needs a motor?” I asked, seeing a fairly hefty portion of a weeks pay in an unopened box on the cellar floor.
“I could take it off your hands but it is of no value to us,” he said.
“Skip it,” I told him, graciously leading him out the door.
March became April and we opened the windows and turned off the furnace. The warm blur of summer went by. We tried to put it off as long as we could but a couple days ago, we turned on the heat.
Again the comfortable hum of the motor could be felt throughout the ancient beams and boards. The dust bunnies and cat hair that had collected over the summer was rudely awakened from hibernation and made airborne as the warm air came blasting out of the registers. And then, alas, no heat.
When I returned from work one morning, the oil-filled radiators were back on the job. Before I went to bed, I had an appointment set up with Demitri.
The next afternoon, the house was humming and I was writing a check to Demitri, who assured me that my furnace would be giving me many more years of happy service.
I need a new roof and the paint is peeling and I would really love to put in a new garage. In spite of Demitri’s attempts at calming my qualms, am I going to need a new furnace? Good thing Melissa saved these oil-filled radiators.
Maybe I just need a new house.
Meanwhile I’ll go online and look for a replacement dingus schnobber.
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