Boring Stuff Summary! Part I: The Furnace

Something else they don't show you on HGTV: the long, long days where it seems like nothing is happening. It is - the headache-inducing racket is proof. So I'll skip to the before and after photos to borrow a bit from the 3 months in 30 minute TV shows. The list to the left is pretty typical: back fill gas line, sheathing, dig trough, break concrete, drill soffit vents, clean and organize site.

More boring stuff

The furnace switch to gas was a bust. We started wanted to get rid of all our ductwork. We looked into ductless heat pumps, but they were expensive and not very effective for an old house like ours. We'd have to spend thousands on supplemental electric heat. Very cool technology though. We briefly looked at wood heat (cheap, but dusty and a lot of work), then into switching to electric heat, but our electrical service would have to upgraded, our floor isn't insulated, and smart meters are coming. Maybe not the time to switch to electric heat. So...gas. The gas furnace arrived and I was please to see how small it was. Hurray! Then, they installed it and I realized that by having to hook it into the existing ductwork, it takes up the same amount of space. Plus, it has all these idiotic pipes coming out of it. The big white pipe in the photo is the worst. It has to be on an angle and it has to vent to outside. So now I have a giant white pipe running across a wall I was hoping to put a TV on. It also pokes out of the outside wall beside the gas meter which covers half my walkway. There's also the copper gas pipe, a second white pipe for fresh air intake, AND a water pipe. To top it all off, the high efficiency fan sounds like a jet taking off. Not what you want in a music room. Now we have a giant, insulated room inside a room. Such a disappointment!

At least we seem marginally warmer. I haven't seen my first gas bill, so the jury's still out.