“You know, you guys are handling this a lot better than most people.”
This is something an electrician said to us on Monday afternoon. Suffice it to say, Monday wasn’t a great day for us.
It started when I woke up at 3:00a and the house was a little bit cool. The furnace wasn’t blowing any air. I did the first thing I always do in a situation like this and checked the furnace filter. It was pretty dirty, but removing it didn’t get the air flowing.
I changed the thermostat to “Fan” instead of “Auto.” That got the air flowing, but it was just blowing cool, ambient temperature air. We weren’t getting any heat, it was -18 degrees outside, and the temperature inside the house was dropping at about 3 degrees per hour.
The furnace was dead. Cracked heat exchanger. The good news is that it shuts down if it breaks, so as to not blow carbon monoxide through the house and, you know, kill us.
If you’re paying attention, you probably noted that I’m talking about the furnace, but the initial statement came from an electrician.
Yeah. That’s the kind of day it was.
We were able to get somebody out in the morning to give us a bid on a new furnace. We met the sales rep at about 10:30a, and by 1:00p, they were installing our new furnace. The internal temperature of the house had dropped to the low-50s by then.
We plugged some space heaters in throughout the house to try to at least slow the dropping temps until we had the furnace up and running. After a few minutes, the breaker blew.
I couldn’t reset it. When I tried, I saw a spark and heard a nice big POP in the breaker box. Time to call the electrician.
I’ve replaced outlets before. That’s not too difficult. But I won’t mess with the panel. We called the electrician thinking he would need to replace an old, blown breaker.
He took one look and said, “I need to isolate the problem in the house. What probably happened is that the circuit got overworked by the space heaters, melted the insulation around the wires, allowing the wires to touch, causing the short.”
Our house was built in 1976 and there was a lot of...questionable...work done. I have now learned that a 15A circuit should have no more than 10 outlets connected to it. We had all 4 bedrooms, 22 outlets in all, wired to that one circuit. So, putting small space heaters in the separate bedrooms was not sufficient since they were all wired together.
He was unable to isolate the problem. Evidently, the problems went way beyond just one spot on the line.
So, now we need to have a new circuit run from the panel, through the walls, to the rooms. Scratch that, two circuits, since you can’t have that much on one.
And then the breaker box needed to be replaced because it was old, there wasn’t room, and it was more or less a complete mess.
I woke up a little cold at 3:00a and 10 hours later needed a new furnace and a shit-load of electrical work done.
“You guys are handling this a lot better than most people.”
I actually responded to him that we basically had two choices - we could be out almost $16,000 on the day, or we could be out almost $16,000 on the day AND be pissed off about it.
To top it off, the door knob between the house and the garage seized up and broke, likely because of the insane cold we have been experiencing the past week, and also needs to be replaced.
What I have really seen through this ordeal, though, is the importance of remembering your philosophy. I have written quite a bit in the past about how I read the Stoics. I try to read at least a little bit each day. I don’t read substantial amounts, but just a little bit, so I always have it fairly fresh in my mind.
When an objectively pretty rough day hit, it was ok. It was kept in perspective. We have our health. We were safe. We didn’t burn the house down. It never got so cold inside that we had to worry about the pipes bursting, causing even more damage. Devin went to my mother-in-law’s house, and Danica was at daycare. It happened on a day off, but not on a day that we had already had plans.
The two big issues now being addressed were pretty much the last two things we had not addressed in the house - the furnace and the breaker box. If and when we try to sell the house, we likely would have had to cut our price by at least as much as it cost us so the next owner could address those issues. We are just paying for them now instead of later. And at least now we get to enjoy the benefits of a new furnace for the time being.
I don’t wish this ordeal on any of you. But when days like that hit, remember to keep your philosophy close at hand. For me, Stoicism helps. You will be faced with an option. Whatever is happening is happening. It can happen, or it can happen AND you can be angry about it.