That's a genuine Warm Morning..those things will heat a two story house. I wish I had that. I have a "modern" one that supposed to be equal to a Warm Morning. It aint. It's a giant ice cube and it's not going to be here next Winter. I'm hoping I run into a Warm Morning at a sale. They look like shit sitting in your house, but, that's what I get for living in this...place. I keep heat rocks on top of mine. Or you can set a bowl of water on it and call it a humidifier. Purdy, huu?*
Furnaces are like people. They're all different and you have to get to know them. I've had wood ones, coal ones, oil ones, electric ones and gas ones. I lived in a trailer once where the pilot light went out constantly and the only way to light it was to put a tampon on the end of a wire hanger and soak it in WD40. ~Shakes head~ I've had monstrosities that lurked in cellars and could double as a kiln. Heat your house and fire some pottery at the same time. I had one once that had an explosive pilot light. You waited for the WOOSH and ran like hell. It was consistant though, you only had to do that once a year. I've had fancy central heating units that froze your ass out and killed all the plants and an old wood stove that was so hot you had to open the front door in January. We called that one "the God of Hellfire."
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Is anybody happy in Winter?? I figure you have your own furnace story..wanna tell it?
18 comments:
My gradnparents had a very small house and a single furnace that stood in the living room. It was a long vertical thing that sood on the wall. You would come in from playing in the ice and snow and just wait in front of that thing to kick on. It was always the best feeling to have that warm air rush over you when you were cold.
y'all already know my furnace story from this year and the CM poisoning! hope i never have another furnace story!!!
I rented a house that had a furnace similar to this "Warm Morning". It was the ugliest thing around, but it sure kicked out the heat. We always put a pan of water on the top, but would forget to fill it and wow, what a smell! Unfortunately, with a furnace like that, you usually need those pass through vents in the floors of the upper level, but this house didn't have that, so I had two rooms that cooked and three that froze.
Our furnace confuses all the newbies that come to clean it. We have a smallish 3 bedroom house and it has four zones (oil heat).
We had issues with it when we first lived here for the first couple years but we had the burner replaced and it has continuous hot water.
I have dealt with Oil, Gas, and electric. Never had wood stove.
My grandparents had a huge one of those and kept an old coffe can with water on top of it. It was all scaley from the lime in the water. They shut off their upstairs after they had no kids there anymore and it was an icicle!! They also had those pedestal "whirling" ashtrays that I loved to play with. And their house had once been a log cabin, as has mine, until it was remodeled and added onto, as has mine. The slopey floors and timbers in the basement reveal its true origins! This is a warm heater & really warm right in same room and will melt your belt or jeans tags right off your pants and singe your clothes if you snuggle up too close to it!
My grandmas furnace has been on the fritz for the past week, she lives about 1.5 hours away from us. It's natural gas and only a few years old and still under warranty. The furnace guys have been there for a few days trying to figure out what's wrong. She is a very go with the flow type person so she has put extra clothes on and keeps the cats close.
Hopefully it gets fixed real soon, it's cold here. But looking on the bright side at least a skunk didn't chew through a duct and go boom like the last time. That was just a little bit smelly.
I think my grandmother's furnace was like this one. You could always smell just a little whiff of natural gas.
My furnace is broke. We have to wait till payday to get it looked at. That's a week from tomorrow . We live in Michigan. And we are freezing. Sucks to be poor.
I have gas central heating. My furnace gave up the ghost yesterday. I have an old wall gas grill (instead of a fireplace) in my 1938 house. I am relying on that instead of central heat, and it is just lovely, so lucky to have it.
Screw poor...sucks to live in Michigan
My Dad is/was very frugal. We had a wood burner with a water jacket around it. The water would then circulate through the radiators to heat the house. In the winter, we would turn the oil burner on just to heat hot water for showers and the dishwasher. My Dad would turn down the water after like 10 minutes, which meant you got 2 minutes of hot water. I hate cold showers now. I don't mind dressing warm and keeping it cool to sleep, but I've gotta have a hot shower. I guess this heating system my Dad had rigged up was more complicated than the nuclear reactor in a submarine and had the potential to blow up. This I didn't know until a few years ago, thank goodness...
Two years ago, because I live by the airport, the FAA did free sound abatement on houses within a certain sound range chart. I got all new sound proof windows and a new furnace, duct work, central air, and chimney liner. All at no cost to me.
They hauled out the old HUGE furnace that was probably 45 to 50 years old. You could hear it rumble and the woosh when it was ready to click on. No electric pilot light, that thing burned all the time. When the heat kicked on it was nice hot air coming from the vents and the house was always toasty warm. When it needed repair or cleaning I did it myself. There were 4 main parts. The blower, the gas line/filter, the burner and the thermo coupler. It was an eyesore but my bills were never high and it ran like a top.
They replaced it with this fancy high efficiency furnace that blows medium warm air and clicks on 2x as often as my old one running my electric bill up. It's all circuit boards. After only 2 years it's already conked out once. Luckily I was able to take some steel wool to the coupler and fix it.
I wish I had my old furnace back.
Check out THAW - The Heat and Warmth Fund in Michigan to help those with trouble paying heating bills.
http://www.thawfund.org/
Miss Tia...I hope no one has a story like that. That was way too close for comfort!
This is not a furnace story, but it is a CM story. To make it very short, several years back, 3 local boys were camping out in a shed. They made a charcoal fire in a bar-b-cue pit to keep warm. The shed was sealed better than anyone ever thought. One of the boys died and the other 2 were so close. I still think of that when I hear CM stories! No one should take CM for
granted!
I like these stories. How come the new shit doesn't work and old stuff does? It's like low flow toilets. OMG, give me a break. How do they save water if you have to flush three times??
ok, I work in the offices of a heating/Cooling & Plumbing company. I totally get what you guys are saying about the new stuff and the low-flow toilets are awful, and they get stopped up easily. Around here, you have to go to Canada & buy a regular toilet and smuggle it across the border. LOL! True! But people do it. I just know that my grandparents had this furnace in their old living room area. Throw rugs all around and her blue & white Wedgewood vases around, even as a kid, I knew those were nice and I wanted them! But that was the coziest LR and when that thing "Whooshed" on and it was going strong, there wasnt a better place to be at that moment! I learned to tie my shoes sitting right beside it! I was 5. Gawd, the things that will jog your memory.
My grandmother left me a fortune in Wedgewood. Among many other things of value. I sold it all and paid cash for my house.
I totally know where you're coming from, Peg. We had an old furnace with vents on the floors that my kids would fight over, who got to sit on it with their blankets forming a "hot tent". Now, it's high efficiency, luke warm air and twice as expensive to run. High efficiency my fat ass.
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