So in the fall our heat bill wasn't too bad for such a big house that doesn't have insulation, has thin windows, and old radiators. Then the night before Thanksgiving I noticed that the house was really hot. I went to the thermostat to turn the temperature down. A little later I check on the thermostat because the house didn't feel any cooler. When I checked the temperature was even hotter. I drastically turned the temperature down but still the house kept getting hotter and it was rising fast. In just a matter of minutes it went from 75 to 80 degrees. I was really scared. I turned the thermostat off and packed some things for Ava. Off we went to my brother and sister-in-law's, who live next door. From there I called Mason at work and tried researching about radiators and boilers. I really thought that our boiler was going to explode.
Mason called our landlord to arrange for someone to check it out, but we knew that no one would come out on Thanksgiving. So an appointment was made for Friday. We went back into the house which was still hot and smelled horribly. We packed up more stuff and headed to stay at my parents.
The first guys came to our house and stayed for a few minutes. They looked at the boiler and decided that it was so old they wouldn't even touch it. They gave our landlord the name of a specialist.
It took awhile for the specialist to come to our house. December isn't the best time for heat problems.
I learned that once the temperature hit 72, even though it was supposed to be 70, that I would have to turn off the thermostat quick or the temperature would keep rising and not stop until it was 80.
The specialist came out to the house and was there for less than 5 mins. Mason tried to talk to him about the thermostat and starting from there. We thought the guy was on board, but we found out later from our landlord, after no followup appointment was being made, that the specialist told our landlord that nothing was wrong. We were so mad. Nothing wrong?! The boiler might catch on fire, but no big deal!
In the meantime, the above method of turning of the thermostat quickly stopped working. The heat stopped working. The thermostat would be on, the boiler going and the house was freezing. It was below 50 degrees at night and thus began Ava sleeping in our bed for a month. I would bundle Ava and I up for the day and turn on heaters that we borrowed from my parents. Still the house would be in the 60s for the warmest part of the day. I took Ava to my parents a couple of times so we wouldn't freeze all the time. We turned off the thermostat, but later we would find that that didn't matter. I began thinking that we might have to move out of the house.
We got our first bill after the craziness first started and we weren't happy, but we expected it to be bad. I reasoned that our rent was so low, that it was okay for our heat bill to be high a couple of months of the year.
The specialist finally came out again and this time the story changed. Now everything was wrong. He told us he was about to tell our landlord that we would need a new boiler, which would not have made our landlord very happy. Luckily, the specialist got a new thermostat, did some new wiring, fixed one pump, and put in another new pump and we seemed to be back up and running. Turned out the wiring to the thermostat wasn't done very well, so it really didn't matter what temperature we put.
We were good to go. Or so we thought.
We got our next gas bill and it was worst than our last. We couldn't believe it. Having the house at 80 degrees - made sense the bill was bad. But to have the bill even higher when our house hadn't even reached 70 degrees for a month. Craziness.
What was even worse, the next month, the bill was even higher. I couldn't believe how high the bill had gotten. I thought we had fix the problems and that the bill would be lower. I began writing down the numbers at the meter every couple of days, trying to see if that was the problem. But then our last bill came and it was drastically lower.
I think the rest of the year should be good. I already thinking of turning off the heat during the day. Mason ran into the couple that lived in this house before us and I guess they kept the heat at 55 during the winter, but they didn't have a baby while living at this house and probably were gone most of the day.
If we are still here next winter, I really hope things turn out better. When Mason and I get our own house some day, we will definitely not be buying an old house. We definitely know old houses are not worth the problems that they come with.
No comments:
Post a Comment