So we had an interesting week. Last Friday evening, as I was giving Knox his
bath, I realized that no matter how long I let the bathroom faucet go, the
water wasn’t getting warm. I told Josh about the problem and he disappeared to
the basement. Five minutes later, he confirmed my suspicion: we had run out of
heating oil (which fuels our boiler, which supplies hot water to our radiators
AND our faucets, taking the place of a hot water heater).
We knew this was going to happen. But we
thought we had until August.
Back in March, we told our heating oil
company to cut off deliveries. The plan at the time was we wanted to convert
our house to be heated by natural gas, get rid of the indoor oil tank in the
basement, and finally patch the crumbling foundation wall behind it (the joys
of owning an old house!). In the past month, we had called BGE and found out it
would basically be free to get reconnected to the natural gas grid, and had one
contractor come out and price out the interior connections and a new boiler for
the radiators and a separate hot water heater for the faucets. And that price
was like $10,000.
No thank you, we thought. We’ll stick with
oil. But we still needed to temporarily move the oil tank so we could fix the
wall behind it, and this would require an empty tank, because the steel alone
was going to be pretty darn heavy to move. We thought we would still put in a
separate hot water heater though, to save money on oil during the times of the
year when we don’t need the boiler to heat the radiators. (I’m secretly now an
expert on this stuff, guys.)
But somehow, on June 30, we had already
run out of oil. I blame that cold May, when I may have turned the heat back on
once or twice after swearing we were no longer using the heat. Or there could
be so much sludge at the bottom of our tank (which a contractor estimated was
probably about 60 years old). While it had looked like we had an eighth of a
tank back in April, a significant part of that could have been dirt particles
or oil fungus (not making that up—I told you, I’m secretly a heating system
expert).
Josh felt really bad that we had run out
so early, and said, “Well, maybe they can deliver just 100 gallons.”
“No way,” I said. Who knows how long it
would take to use up 100 gallons in the summer—and the heating oil company
likely wouldn’t come out for any smaller of a delivery, and we already had our
mason lined up to do the foundation work. Any new delivery of oil would setback
the progress of “fixing” the basement (there are a lot of problems we’re hoping
to have fixed by September) and I didn’t want to take any more steps backward.
Instead, I saw this as the impetus to finally make up our minds about what we
wanted the future floor plan to look like in the basement (potentially a
new/moved laundry room, restore the full bathroom, create new closets, convert
old laundry room to a mudroom, and use the open living space as a kids’
playroom, as in “you’re driving me crazy, go down to the playroom!”). We also
needed to determine to what extent we would need a plumber: to move some pipes
in the mudroom, extend some pipes in the new laundry room, and maybe add a hot
water heater or not add a hot water heater (I didn’t want one because you hear
so many stories about them breaking down and flooding people’s basements, so
they rather seem like a ticking time bomb of water to me). With Rye away
visiting his grandmother, we had the next 48 hours (minus sleeping and Josh’s
work time) to really discuss our plans (with fewer interruptions) and figure
this thing out.
And in the meantime, if that meant cold
showers, cold water laundry and cold water for doing dishes, so be it.
“At least it’s not the air conditioning,”
I said.
We had to wait until Monday before we
could call any contractors, and with that being the day before the Fourth of
July, we realized it was unlikely we would make much progress. Still, Josh got
in touch with the mason on Monday and asked him if he would recommend his
plumbing contractor and if the two could work on the basement project together.
But then we never did hear back from him about setting an actual day up for
them to visit and view the plumbing problems together. Josh did get in touch
with our new oil supplier and discussed the overall issues and the oil versus
natural gas debate with one of their representatives. Sensing that this guy
Keith really knew his stuff, Josh set up for Keith to visit us Thursday to
determine 1) whether it would be possible to move our oil tank, re-hook it up,
and then refill it so we could use it ASAP; and 2) if the oil tank can’t be
moved (it kind of looked cemented into the floor, yikes) whether we should just
switch to natural gas (which their company supports and could still be our
supplier for and thus could give an honest opinion).
Josh was working Thursday so I met Keith
at the door, and he greeted me with “So you guys must be real romantics.” I gave
him a puzzled look. “You know, to buy an old house.” And I laughed. After a
quick tour of the basement and some peeking around the house at the radiators
and baseboards upstairs, Keith gave his opinion: 1) we have some fabulous,
gigantic radiators; and 2) because they’re so gigantic, it wouldn’t save us
money to switch to natural gas because it would take more natural gas and thus
more money to still get enough BTUs to actually heat them up and keep our house
warm. The tank should not be moved and reconnected, he said, but a new tank is
only like $2,000. And while our boiler system is functional, it’s on its last
legs, a sort of ticking time bomb on its own, so he would give us a proposal on
what a new and more modern oil burning boiler would cost. (He also recommended
against installing a separate hot water heater because using a boiler 12 months
a year can extend its life by ten years.) He called Josh on Friday to discuss
more specifics (though not a price yet, needed more info from us on linear feet
of radiators and baseboards), and asked Josh how much oil we had left.
“None?” Keith repeated. “So you’re taking
cold showers?”
Josh confirmed we had indeed been taking
cold showers for a week.
“There’s no way my wife would have put up
with that,” Keith said.
And there, I think I earned myself the “Miss
Low Maintenance of 2017” award. I was prepared to continue using cold water for
the next month and a half if that was what it was going to take to do the
rights steps in the right order to get our basement closer to its end goal.
Cold showers are not fun; I found its best to take one immediately after being
outside, and to not expect to wash your hair and body at the same time because
it just takes too much time. I started washing my hair under the faucet instead
of in the shower. I even got a haircut and went back to having shoulder-length
hair to make it easier to wash under the faucet. In the 8 days we did not have
hot water, I took three showers and washed my hair twice.
 |
| Evidence of haircut |
And on day eight, Keith told Josh that “heating
oil” is the same as “off road diesel,” which is available at some gas stations.
He told Josh to buy five or ten gallons, pour them in the tank, prime the pump
to get the fuel suction restarted to get it to the boiler, and then we’d have
at least a few more weeks of hot water while our new tank and boiler system
were being priced, scheduled and later installed. So Josh did it! He bought ten
gallons of the diesel, watched a video on YouTube, and got our hot water back.
I’m not going to lie, that first hot shower
felt goooooood.
But I think I could have stuck it out the
six weeks (an arbitrary estimate of how long it would take to get a new boiler
and/or hot water heater). Josh had already taken one hot shower at a friends’
house, but I was thinking of making a challenge out of it (you know, and maybe
raising money for a charity or something, haha) and just sticking to cold water
until all the problems were fixed. But once the hot water was there, I wasn’t
going to refuse it.
For the past two days, every time I turn
the faucet on and the water is warmer than cool, it catches me off guard.
Trying to rinse cantaloupe off Knox’s hands, I was surprised to find the water
was too hot, and quickly had to turn it down. I can’t find my sweet spot on the
shower dial of where the perfectly warm water is.
It’s crazy how quickly you can adjust, and
it’s kind of reassuring too. Instead of being irritated or down in the dumps
about not having hot water, I thought of it as a week of glamping (which is “glamorous
camping,” in case you’re unfamiliar with that term). Our glamping cabin had
1800 square feet; rich, wood floors and wood trimmed windows and doors;
comfortable beds just like at home; air conditioning; a fabulous kitchen; and
indoor plumbing—all the modern amenities, with the exception of hot water.
And we’ll probably get to do some more
glamping at home later this summer, once we make up our minds about getting the
new boiler and oil tank and have the foundation wall repaired and the plumbing
changes made. I hope it’s another hot week then so that the cold showers will
feel just as refreshing. And I hope
it only takes a week once the work starts. We’ll see.
