Heat Died

[24prins]

The boiler is out (in the middle of a snow, of course) and won't reset. The oil company is trying to get someone here this morning, but the rep says lots of people lost their heat last night so they're stacked up with calls.

I've got dh's little heater next to me and a big pot of boiling water on the stove. Dh refuses to leave his office (he's got a lot of work today) and won't take the heater, and Jesse the dog won't leave the couch. Glad the girls are at school and the electric is working. I've got a while before I have to worry about the pipes freezing, so hopefully they'll get here this morning and the problem will be fixable.

I've got an old Dynatherm boiler, which is pretty efficient for a huge old boiler. It generates hot water as well, so no separate water heater here. It does mean that when the boiler goes out, we lose hot water too. Oh, well.

[Crystal]

Oooh, good luck. I hope they do come before the pipes freeze. You know if any are in special danger you can aim that little heater directly at the pipe and maybe keep it unfrozen. What a nightmare. Keep us posted.

[24prins]

It's back on - yay! It was a bad safety switch and they showed up much more quickly than I had thought. Love the locally-owned company. The guy who came here has worked for them for years, I know the owner, and the family has lived here and employed local folks for years.

[Float On]

So glad it was an easy fix!

[Tenngal]

we have a natural gas forced air sytem which went out in late November. Took about 3 wks of replacing parts and testing to finally decide we needed a new unit. When the elec is out (not very often, but something to worry about) we have no heat. Last week I bit the bullet and had a 30,000 BTU blue flame wall heater installed in a central location in our 1400 sq ft house. Now if the power goes, we will have backup heat. I decided this was better than the kersene heaters we would have to bring in and use previously. Since you are in Jersey I know you deal with much colder weather on a regular basis than we do.

[janharker]

>:(My hot water heater died a week and a half ago. Finally got it replaced yesterday. General Electric called today to do one of those customer service follow-up calls. I gave them an ear full about how long it took. What I can't believe is that the lady actually asked me if I was without hot water during the time it took to get it replaced. DUH!

[Jonathan]

What I can't believe is that the lady actually asked me if I was without hot water during the time it took to get it replaced. DUH!That is actually NOT an odd question. Many houses have multiple water heaters and some houses have alternate boilers that also can be used to preheat a water heater.

Besides, she's just reading off a computer panel and just needs to get the question filled in so she can go to the next. I hope you were polite while giving them an earful...

[jp1]

Going back to the OP's situation, another thing one can do to help prevent pipes freezing is to leave faucets on. Not gushing water, but enough that the water is constantly moving. The water entering the house will always be above freezing and as long as it can make it through the pipes and out the faucets before getting chilled enough to freeze you'll be fine. And if you're there to monitor it you can always crank up the flow if it starts to slow down like it's beginning to freeze.

Obviously this isn't ideal but it'd sure beat having to get the plumber to come fix the frozen pipes after the furnace guy fixes the furnace... Of course if it's going to be weeks, or even days, of subfreezing weather before the heat gets fixed it might be better just to go ahead and drain the pipes.

Tenngal, your decision reminds me of when my grandparents got central air (and by extension, central heat) in their 1880s farmhouse in SW missouri. Prior to that they'd used 2 ancient propane heatstoves, one in the dead center of the house in the living room and the other in the 'fancy' living room that rarely got used, to heat the house, which didn't need electricity. The new central heat needed electricity, of course, so my grandmother insisted that they leave one of the old heatstoves just in case the electricity went out. Because even back in the early 80s she didn't trust the electricity to be reliable. (truthfully they could've survived days without electricity without problem. Their kitchen stove and hot water heater were also propane and old enough that they didn't need electricity, and if it was winter they could move food from the fridge out to the back porch to stay cool, and life would've gone on for them just fine.)

[janharker]

Actually, we do have a second hot water heater. For a different part of the house. In the context of her questions I understood her to be asking whether the specific tank in question was providing hot water. I explained to her, forcefully but I hope not rudely that I can't have hot water from that tank because it was shut off because it was draining water all over the room and under the furnace. I understood that she was reading off of a list of questions. But, geez, pay attention to my previous answers and even to the reason why they were replacing the tank in the first place!