I moved into the Narnia Harem in February of 2009. I knew the girl who lived there previously, and my landlord is her father. We all went out a few times when she was still living there in the dead of winter, so I knew the place could get kind of chilly. It’s an old cottage house, for God’s sake, they aren’t known for their efficiency. I wasn’t deterred. This is Atlanta. We really only have about a month of really cold weather a year, and by the time I moved in, that month was almost over.
My problems started in December. After 10 months of warm weather, it finally got cold enough to turn the furnace on. I flipped the switch, and nothing happened. I gave it a good five or ten minutes, still nothing. I checked all the circuit breakers and they were all kosher. I even went around to the furnace unit out back and poked it with a stick, cause that works well for homeless people. Still no luck.
I called up the caretaker guy that lives in the house in front of mine. He came out and took a look at it and discovered that the blower on the furnace had frozen up. “Easy enough fix.” He said, and I was back in the heat business.
December was relatively mild, so I didn’t turn on the furnace unless it got really cold. I did notice that when I turned on the furnace it ran almost non-stop. That was a bit worrisome.
December 31st rolls around and just as I was about to head out to this wedding I was in, I looked at my e-mail. My Georgia Natural Gas bill had arrived. I took a gander at it, and immediately lost my shit. It was $197! That’s Dollars American, not Zimbabwean Dollars. Ridiculous.
By this point, it had started getting really cold down here; like 30s for the high. That’s bone-chilling cold for The ATL. I had to leave the heat on while I was gone or everything would freeze. So off I go to enjoy my New Year’s celebration and when I returned the next day my pipes were frozen. I’d left the water trickling and everything. Freakin awesome. I didn’t realize at the time that the temperature would not get above freezing for the next week, so I didn’t really sweat it too much. “They’ll thaw in a few hours when it warms up outside.” I thought to myself.
The temperature never warmed up, and I spent most of the weekend over at Jenn’s house, because that’s where the party was (and where I could take a shower). Sunday night I had to go back home to get ready for work the next morning. I go inside and it’s not exactly warm in there. The thermostat is set to 62, but the temperature reads 54. Something is not right. I know the furnace is working, I can hear it. I can go to the back of the house and feel it blowing out some warm air out of the vent. It’s not nearly as forceful as it should be though.
This got me to thinking. The house has a relatively new furnace, and it’s huge. It ought to be able to heat this place to 62, even if it is relatively drafty. I’ve lived in 100 year-old houses that were way less insulated than this place and they were much warmer. The house used to have one of those old style furnaces that sits just below the floor with the huge grate covering it. The heat register I think it’s called. That unit is still there, but it’s not functional. There’s another smaller grate nearby that I always just assumed was part of the old system because it’s not like the other vents in the house that distribute the heat. I’d never had a heating issue before, so I never thought too much about it.
After a few minutes of logical thought, I got to thinking about where the air for the furnace was being drawn from. “It makes no sense for the air for the furnace to be drawn from outside the house. That must be the intake vent. I’ll check it out in the morning.” I said to myself.
I woke up this morning, changed out of my Spongebob pajamas*, and pulled back the grate in question. Underneath was a layer of cardboard. Never a good sign in a HVAC system. I removed the cardboard and there, much to my chagrin, was the ductwork for the vent laying on the ground two feet below, unattached. I reached my hand down to see if it was working and there was all my heat, being pumped unceremoniously into the crawlspace beneath the house.
This is not a minor issue of simply reconnecting some ductwork. My crawlspace is open, so critters and vermin of various shapes and sizes can just sorta camp out down there at their leisure. As a matter of fact, Narnia is actually run by squirrels, so I’m pretty sure a few of those have probably galloped through there, wreaking havoc on my perfect world, probably nesting and having their disgusting squirrel babies in my heat system. Nope, that whole son of a bitching (I stole that one from George Patton) stretch of duct has to be replaced.
To make matters even worse, I paid my rent yesterday. Nothing quite like dropping over a week’s pay on a house that’s unlivable.
*They’re actually Spider-Man PJs.
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