It's COLD in here!

Yesterday evening while cooking dinner, I felt cold so I went to check the heat. Our thermostat is a turn dial that easily gets bumped and turned down (or way up) by accident. When I reached the thermostat, I saw that it was already turned up to our preferred temperature of 70 degrees but the house was only at 62 degrees. I turned it way up and the heat didn't click on. It was then that I realized I had been checking the heat all day and the temperature had been going down all day.

I asked my husband to check it out. He played it it for a while and then went down into our cellar and played with the furnace for a while. Then he got online and researched it for a while. Back and forth he went: computer, thermostat, computer, furnace, computer. He finally concluded that he thought it was either a specific part on the furnace or the thermostat itself. Off to Home Depot he went. He arrived home with two parts.

First, he installed the furnace part; it was the cheapest fix. It didn't do it. So, he started to install the thermostat only to find it wouldn't work. The thermostat requires a three-wire set up and ours only has a two-wire set up. Back to Home Depot he went only to return at 9pm with news that Home Depot didn't carry any two-wire thermostats. We'd just have to bundle up for the night.

Fortunately for us, our bedrooms upstairs have their own cadet heaters and don't use the forced air heat from the furnace. We were nice and warm in our rooms last night but when we came downstairs it was only 57 degrees in our house. Today's high is 48 so I'm expected it to continue to get colder in our house. You see, we have 17 single-pane windows on the first floor of our house letting in all that cold air.

We are hoping the little, local, family-owned hardware store will have a thermostat that will work. They often carry parts for older homes (ours is 88 years old) that the big stores don't carry. In the meantime, send some warmth our way, will ya?