Friday, February 24, 2012

Brrrr....

Or, oil experiment gone wrong...

Before we moved into this house a new furnace was installed, as was a new woodstove and the entire house was reinsulated.  Good stuff!!  Our oil was quite low when we moved in and the conservation area we rent the property from suggested we let it run right out so that we could get an idea of how much oil is left after it hits E on the oil gauge (Exactly three weeks with very conservative use), and that because the oil company services the entire conservation area and it's properties we would have no problems getting them out to fill us up immediately upon running out.  Plus, we haven't really been having a lot of winter lately.  Lots of sunshine, days above 5 and mushy lanes. Also good stuff! So no big deal!

Yesterday we arrived home after running some errands before Mr. Pretties needed to leave for work.  When I got home the house felt a little cool.  This house is on either side of 120 years old, it's always cool.  So I went into the livingroom and turned up the heat, cozy heat immediately blasted from the grated orfices in our floors!  Oh wait, that didn't happen.  Nothing happened.  No hum. No rumble. Nothing that sounds like a locomotive is driving through our dirt and stone basement.  Crap. No oil. But! That's not a problem for those of us in the know, who can have the oil company pop over on an oil guzzling whim! Oh wait, that wasn't the case either.  There was a misunderstanding and Mr. Oil cannot possibly bring us anymore until Monday.  But the beauty part of this house is that if our gas furnace died we would have slowly froze to death between now and Monday (Trust me.  Our gas furnace did die in our non-insulated 1910 victorian last winter - it was unpleasant to say the least) but instead we just popped some wood in the stove, put on a sweater and carried on with our day!  Very few things can beat the option of secondary heat. Love. It.

So we're hanging around the house this weekend babysitting the woodstove and doing cozy things.  We really need to be doing buying baby things, type of things, but we'll work that out.  In the mean time we'll listen to the howling wind outside and the freezing rain hurling itself at the windows and be thankful that we have the shelter of this mighty yellow brick farmhouse, piles of down blankets and a woodstove that's crackling awayin the kitchen and pumping our house full of heat.  It's a good time.

1 comment:

  1. Good thing you had a back up plan. Its when things like this happen and you can go for an alternative and not freeze you realize you are more prepared than you thought.

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