Tuesday, December 9, 2014

OverEngineered and Over Reacting

But at least we didn't flood this year:  Living in a 100+ year old house means there is always something that needs fixing, repairing or just simple routine maintenance.   While Former Owner did a lot of updating and upkeep, there are still things that need to addressed sooner or later.  Former Owner was a fire fighter and fire fighters have a reputation for also being part time plumbers, electricians, and other types of tradesmen.   (heretofore known as Tim-the-Fireman for reasons that hopefully will become obvious)

Angie's List had a Furnace Inspection, Cleaning, and Tune-Up  deal and I scheduled the service.  I bought the deal in late September because I figured I'd either need it for the condo since the buyers seemed finicky and likely to ask for it, or I could use it at our place.  Turns out, the new buyers didn't ask for a furnace Tune-Up after all so we got to use it.  Unfortunately, this is heating servicemen busy season so the earliest we could get on their schedule was the week before Thanksgiving.  
Or we'll be resigned to use this more often

This is technically our third winter in this home although really more like our second because we closed two years ago and didn't completely move in until the end of December and that winter was relatively mild.  Even then we noticed that the upstairs was so much hotter than the downstairs, which we attributed to the radiator heat.  I asked Sean the Serviceman if he could figure out the complicated thermostat Tim-the-Fireman installed because we couldn't.  It appears Tim-the-Fireman installed a very complicated zone system with a thermostat that is designed for multi unit apartment buildings, not a SFH.  The zone feature won't work because the radiators don't have the appropriate cutoff pieces and it would cost thousands of dollars to retrofit them.

The less expensive and faster solution is to have the guy disconnect the over-engineered thermostat and replace it with an ordinary Honeywell programmable thermostat.  I wasn't there when Sean made the call but Nightingale trusts him because he spent so much time trying to figure out how to re-program our thermostat on what should have been a short house call.  He even recommended purchasing a thermostat myself rather than pay the markup his company would charge (I checked and it is practically 100%).  I tried getting a wifi one but Sean says those won't work with our furnace so I'll have to go low-tech.  It's a shame because I figured it could talk to my Smart TV and have great debates with the Smart Washer Dryer we will eventually have to purchase.

*******
 There's no such thing as coincidence: A friend I use to know has converted her blog from Public to Private.  I cannot be sure what caused this decision -- maybe too much spam -- but I suspect it was me popping up for a visit last month.  I hadn't visited in almost two years and though my comment wasn't trolly, challenging or controversial (you'll have to take my word for it, because I cannot link back to it) I feel as if she just didn't like me being able to pop over and say hello like the rest of the interwebs.

The one used her blog as an open letter to her friends and she even helped me get this blog started.  But apparently our friendship eroded some time ago and it is much easier to lock the blog down than feign even a modicum of interest in maintaining the friendship.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments Encouraged! And the nice thing about this blog is that I rarely get spam so don't need to moderate the comments.

I've set the comments up to allow anonymous users -- but I'd love it if you "signed" your comments (as some of my readers have done) just so you have an identity of sorts.