The joy of home ownership
It was bad enough that the oil furnace ran nearly out of oil on thursday. It was worse when, at Friday at 5:22pm, I pushed the "on" button and was greeted with 20 seconds of contented roaring from the burner, punctuated nastily by an air bubble in the line reaching the pump and putting it into the mechanical equivalent of cardiac arrest. It got even worse when it happened on a weekend where every day was in the 20s, reinforced by nasty gale-force winds howling out of the Columbia gorge. And it's late December, and we have parties to plan and parties to go to and shopping and packing and... (and it doesn't really matter, because it's basically impossible to get a furnace repair person on the weekends aaaand there doesn't seem to be anyone out there who is willing to part with the arcane knowledge of how to reprime an oil suction pump without being paid for it first.)
Two days, so far, of sawing apart scrapwood and feeding it to the ravenous maw of the downstairs fireplace (with the oh-so-ugly but oh-so-efficient woodburner insert.) And the weather service is talking about freezing rain (aka Portland will be a really big ice rink) tomorrow evening and monday, so it may be two more days of sawing apart scrapwood (punctuated by hurried trips out to salvage old pallets that can be fed to the dark god of household heating. Oh, joy.
On the bright side, it's all the exercise I could ever want. And then some.
When I build the summer camp, it's going to have a boiler with a self-priming fuel pump. Assuming, of course, that I don't die from exhaustion this weekend.
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I totaly can relate. I am building a house over off Johnson Crk Blvd, it's on a bluff adn the wind ripping through has been cutting right through me. I just stepped out for a ciggarette and even though its "warmer" than it's been in over a week at this hour I think my nose will be falling off. At least it's been dry this long. Would have been nice to get a few more days though. . .At least I have heat - upstairs in a duplex we don't even use our own - our neighbors keep us warm.