Day 286 of Staying the Fuck Inside
3 days past solstice, and the day before Sol Invictus.
aka Christmas Eve.
You may recall that shortly after lockdown began, I’d put in a repair order for the air conditioning. It was April. The weather was getting warmer. It was finally July when we had the unit replaced, and part of that whole process was a new furnace.
We are now experiencing the opposite of this.
Last night I turned on the heat, only to hear a horrible clanking (not unlike Einstürzende Neubauten) coming from the furnace. I immediately turned it off, opened the closet door, and got a big whiff of gas.
Despite all of us being inappropriately dressed for last night’s cold weather, we Got the Fuck Outside, called the fire department and PG&E.
Best we can tell at this point is that the roofers who have been continuously dropping shit into our dryer vent (meaning we need to clean out the dryer hose before doing laundry, because there are chunks of wood and debris in there), must have dropped some debris into our furnace vent, which went down the pipe, and into the furnace motor.
We think.
Needless to say, this is not safe at all, as it can fuck the motor, and cause it to burn out, or worse.
This was fine up until last night. But we’d also thought the roofers were done with our unit, and had moved on. They were on the roof yesterday, briefly, for some cleanup, but I guess I know where they dumped things now.
So, the fire department showed up, inspected everything multiple times, and gave their all-clear. PG&E guys stayed a little longer, tested the furnace, pretty much confirmed our hypothesis, unplugged the furnace, and shut off the gas to it. Our hot water heater is fine (thankfully), and is still operational.
Everybody was masked last night, and there was as much social distance as possible, but I still hate the home invasion. We need the furnace taken care of, which will be another home invasion. We just don’t know when, yet.
In the meantime, we have lots of blankets for the night time, and are currently dressing in layers around the house. It’s not freezing, but it’s still really damn cold.
Things could have been much worse, and I’m thankful they weren’t, and aren’t.
2020 remains a year to remember.
One of the reasons I write about it all, even sporadically, is I probably won’t remember half of it, and nobody will believe the other half when I tell them. At least this way, there’s a dated record of events.