Heat and Bad Luck

Ok, so right before Thanksgiving, a friend of mine came to stay with us. Just before she arrived, we heard a loud grinding noise coming from the basement. We went down to check and quickly determined that something was horribly wrong with the boiler, so we turned it off and called the plumbers. They couldn't come immediately, but advised that we should keep it off until they could get out to inspect it. When she arrived at the door, the house was already getting chilly. "Welcome to our house, hope you don't like heat."

Over the next couple days, the crew came out to inspect and determined it was definitely broken. Turns out, when our contractors were replacing pipes in the basement over the summer, at some point the water was shut off, and the boiler system went dry. This somehow broke our circulating motor- the thing that pumps the hot water through the radiators in the house- and now it needed to be replaced. Because radiators are awesome - the house held on to its heat for pretty long while we waited for them to get all the right parts and complete the work. But by the second and third day, we were all getting a little annoyed and tired of walking around under blankets.

Once the pump was fixed, we went on our merry way, and the house was warm and comfy again.

everyone likes a toasty radiator

Then, maybe two weeks after all that, we noticed that the house seemed to be getting slightly cooler. The thermostat noticeably showed that the temperature of the house was at least 5 degrees cooler than it was set to be. So we called the plumbers out again.

Turns out that the work they did to the pump, somehow affected the boiler itself, and ...wait for it... now the whole boiler needed to be replaced. Of course, when we bought the house and saw that the boiler was something like 50 years old, we assumed we would eventually need to replace it. We just didn't expect to have to do it only a few weeks after having a crew come work on the system and swear that the boiler would be fine.

So, after another couple days of wearing blankets, toasting ourselves by the fire, and whining about cold feet - the plumbers finally got the parts and gave us a new boiler. At this point, everything about it is new, so I don't see how anything else could break. Of course, we're about to get more house guests, so everyone should consider themselves warned.

The only good news I can see is that all this work is annoying and disruptive - so it's handy that it's happening now, and not after a new tenant moves into the basement. Hopefully this insures us that no more work will need to happen down there for quite a while. Plus, the new unit is more efficient than the old one, so that's always nice.