Our furnace, repaired two months ago, quit on us last night.
We’d been using it only for the past week, and it worked flawlessly the first four days. Then on Friday, it started behaving erratically — specifically, it was shutting off before it reached the temp we’d set. Overnight, just before 1am, it stopped firing the burner at all, going through a three-tries cycle before giving up.
I thought it might be a gas-pressure issue, but it wasn’t. I conducted my usual test by lighting the range and letting it run awhile to pull propane through the system (which I often do to prime it after swapping cylinders). The water heater is heatin’ water on propane, too. We definitely have fuel in the lines — the furnace burner just won’t ignite.
For now, we’re back to using electric space heaters.
Low teens are four nights away, and we’re one week out from a couple of single-digit dips. Of more immediate concern, today and tomorrow we’re gettin’ some stiff wind — sustained 30mph, gusts predicted up to 48mph — with high temps in the 30s and lows in the 20s.
Today the big blow came out of the southeast and east, where terrain helped shield us. Tomorrow, however, we’ll be blasted hard from the unimpeded west. A power outage is a real possibility throughout.
We’re set for propane. We have almost three full five-gallon cans of stabilized gas put back to power the generator, if need be. And though it was no fun fighting a balky generator last summer, I’m glad we replaced it with one that can run on either gasoline or LP.
Early this morning I called our mobile RV tech. When I described the symptoms of our furnace problem, right away he pinpointed the “high-limit switch” as the likely culprit. He won’t be able to get here with the part ’til Wednesday, maybe Thursday.
This will be a challenge.
I find myself looking forward to my trips to Miller Hardware for propane. The folks working the counter are great, sure, but the real treat is talkin’ with the guys in the yard out back, the young fellas who do the fills.
The pair who topped off my 30-pound tanks this morning wanted to talk fishin’, which isn’t unusual. And while I don’t know shit about fishin’, I do know about talkin’.
So it worked out.
Along with wind today we’ve got rain. What started as light precipitation during my mid-morning trip to town turned into steady, very heavy rainfall through the afternoon and into the evening hours. I checked our rain gauge on The Mountain when Deb got back from work — 5.25 inches, and it was still pouring.
Creeks, rivers and aquifers will benefit, for sure, and it gives us another chance to see how well the developed parts of The Mountain handle runoff. No issues so far.
There really was no point in my doing any work outside today, obviously, and we’re not yet in a position to continue building out the interior of the cabin. While Deb was at work, then, I did some writing, some reading and, with the objective of being smarter today than I was yesterday, some selective viewing of videos.
Deb and I used to commute to work together, and every now and then we’d pop questions to check each other’s awareness of surroundings, services, routes and so on. I did that yesterday while we were heading to Gassville, asking her to identify alternate crossings of the White River (other than the US 62 bridge).
It’s a mindset thing — either you have it or you don’t. And you’d better have it.
Today’s stack of mail brought me an envelope from the Arkansas Department of Transportation — two paper highway maps, one for each of us (Jeep and truck). I presented Deb with her copy this evening.
She smiled.
See, she knew exactly what it meant. I married the right woman.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB
