Day 113 (Part B): "Central heating" sounded like such a good idea at the time! All my life, I have relied on some form of radiant heat in my home, whether it was a freestanding oil stove (not a furnace), a propane stove or a wood stove, or even a portable electric heater, and I never realized how nice it was to stand in front of the heat source until your clothes were nearly smoldering, then to go park in a chair and be comfortable for an hour or more. When I moved into this house and winter came on, I went to stand on a register to circulate warm air up my trouser legs, only to discover that the heat vents were at ceiling level and the registers in the floor only let cold drafts into the room. That was my first taste of "central heating," and it left me feeling I'd made a large mistake.
Shortly thereafter, I discovered that furnaces are fickle beasts. They consume vast quantities of fuel. They require cossetting and cajoling. They like annual medical checkups and they don't carry insurance to cover them. In short, I decided that "central heating" was the devil's own invention, but I was stuck with it.
Today when I had to have the sucker-upper truck out to clear the chimney of a major obstruction, I had to laugh at the alteration the repairman had made to the imprinted "heating - air conditioning" sign on the side. It seems to fit this furnace's gluttony for oil and dollars.
Oh, for the days of a freestanding stove, the kind you lit with a match tossed into the fire box! I don't think they even make them nowadays.
No comments:
Post a Comment