Awhile back, my housekeeper gave me a navy blue throw. It is the softest, most comfortable thing, even after washing. What I like about it is that it is big enough to cover my whole body, top to bottom, when watching TV. I used it all winter. If I felt cold, but it was too early to go to bed, I sat on the couch wrapped in it to warm up. What I don't like about it, however, is that 100% of the time, I get so toasty and snug that I fall asleep. Sitting up. On the couch. Every. Single. Time. I call those my "accidental naps". They are grand, since I am usually sleep deprived; however, they also tend to interfere with my ability to sleep at bedtime. After an accidental nap, I frequently stay up into the wee hours as I wait to feel sleepy again.
That's what happened last night. I had an accidental nap and didn't wake up until after 11:00 PM. I puttered around on the internet for awhile until I felt I could probably sleep, then prepared to shut down for the night. It was probably 2:00 AM. I did my routines, then went to check the thermostat because it felt chilly in the house, and the furnace hadn't come on in awhile. My thermostat shows the house temp on the left and the temp setting on the right. When I looked, there was no readout at all. Nothing on the screen. Nada. Nope. I couldn't tell what the temp was in the house, although I knew the setting was for 74 degrees. Hmmm...
The batteries for the thermostat were changed earlier in the month when I got my regularly scheduled tune-up, but...you know...batteries aren't perfect...so I changed the batteries again. No change. Still no readout. I started blindly pushing buttons to see if I could confuse the thermostat into behaving, and voila! The furnace came on! The house began to warm up. Yay! But then it got warmer and warmer. In fact it was getting HOT in the house. The furnace wouldn't shut off. As the temperature climbed to almost 80 degrees, I decided I couldn't go to bed with a runaway furnace. I feared that it would actually damage the furnace. I figured my best bet was to find the furnace switch and just shut it down for the rest of the night and worry about it in the morning. There is a panel that covers what I thought was the shut-off switch, held on by nut screws. (Not even sure if that is the right term for them!) I didn't have the right size nut driver, so I tried pliers. Nothing budged those screws.
By this time, I was ready to throw in the towel. I called the 24-hour emergency number for my HVAC company at 2:39 AM. The answering service took my info and said someone would call me. I waited over an hour, and no one called. Meanwhile, the furnace magically shut off. At 3:45 AM, I went to bed and took the phone with me. I think I finally fell asleep somewhere close to 4:00. Maybe 4:15.
At 6:39 AM, the phone rang, waking me up. It was the on-call technician, saying he had just come from an overnight call, and did I still need them before normal office hours? No. Furnace was off. I could wait.
When I came out of my garage bedroom, I expected the house to feel chilly since it was only in the low 40s outside...but it wasn't. It felt normal. Then the furnace came on...and went off again, as normal. I checked the thermostat. Perfectly normal readout. As if nothing at all had happened. Of course! The sore throat gets better the day of the doctor appointment. The car mechanic can't make the car misbehave so he can troubleshoot. And now, the delinquent furnace system is doing exactly what it's supposed to do, now that the repair folks have been called. Gotta love Murphy's Law!
Even though the furnace was now working normally, I had the technician come anyway. He and I decided that it was likely a thermostat problem. It might never malfunction again, or--more like my luck--it could happen again tonight. After some thought, I decided to have him replace it. It wasn't an expense I had budgeted for this month--$370--but I will have the peace of mind knowing that the new thermostat has a lifetime warranty. Couple that with the technician teaching me more than I ever knew about my HVAC system, and I felt like a winner.
My inside climate control is important to me. I determined a zillion years ago that I didn't want to be uncomfortable in my own home. I lived much of my younger life without air conditioning and with a coal furnace. We couldn't go anywhere overnight without finding someone to come in and stoke the furnace. I didn't want that for me or for my daughter.
I don't take risks with the plumbing, the electricity, or the heat. All I want out of life is to live the rest of my days in whatever comfort I can provide for myself. So far, so good!
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