Trouble On The Home Front

I make no secret that I live on the frozen tundra of the northland.  The last few days the outside temperatures have been nothing short of brutal.  Meanwhile I’ve been cozy as all get out in my Big Van.  Going through a 20lb propane tank in about three and a half days.

Part of the reason for the rapid use is it has been too cold to even go do anything. Rather than walking downtown to visit a pub or go see a movie, I have just been just walking to the van and determining it is too cold to go back out.  So every night I am just hanging out in the van. Running the furnace and needing to keep it…sitting around playing guitar, doing some writing, or van planning... temperature rather than being able to lower it down to the sleeping under a pile of blankets setting.  So yeah, I am burning more propane.

Minus ten below floor temperature
under a few layers of sweatshirts.

The coldest outside air temperature for two nights was around minus thirty two degrees Fahrenheit.  Fairly calm the second night but the first night was very windy too. The BV was rocking! Like I said, sitting up on my bed I was plenty warm.  The floor though was cold.  Particularly in spots.  By the side doors, which as it turned out, were on the windward side.  Around those doors it was very cold and drafty. I put my big coat on the floor in this area.  That helped a lot.  Under my table, which is at the back of the side doors, I threw down several sweatshirts.  Later in the night I checked the floor temperature back there and it was minus ten under those shirts.   I had no idea sweatshirts were such good insulators. 

I thought this was cold.  ...This
was not cold.  It went down another
five degrees.

By the back doors there always seems to be a gentle breeze on my face when I am sleeping.  These two nights of course this breeze has teeth.  I took to wearing a hooded sweatshirt as part of my night attire.  I woke up at one point and felt my nose trying to determine if it could be getting near frostbite temperature. …I don't think it was but it was cold enough for me to decide to roll over.

All of this must sound really miserable, but it is just my life right now.  I look it all as an adventure, and as Bilbo Baggins would tell you, adventures always have some rough patches.  Nasty uncomfortable things, adventures.

But my van life is only half of the life I live.  At the opposite end of the spectrum from the sixty three square feet I live in five days a week is the sprawling manse I live in the other two.  A big old one hundred and ten year old structure I am sure on my deathbed will be the pinnacle of cool places I have dwelled.

When the salty road ice freezes on your tires.

As I lay sleeping one of those awful cold nights my phone rang at four AM.  When I saw the caller ID I knew this could not be good news.

The Wife said the kids were complaining about being cold in their rooms earlier when they went to bed. But what can you expect?  It was only two degrees shy of the coldest temperatures I had ever lived through.  Given the size of the house, we are cheap how we heat it.  The kitchen and our office/bedroom we keep around seventy.  But the rest of the place, including the kids bedrooms we keep 59.  Add wind and sure they complain some.  She didn't think anything of it.

It was the four AM call to nature when she remembered she had not reopened the dining room doors.  Those doors hide the thermostat and we have discovered in the past will throw off the whole house temperature.  She walked to the other side of the house to open them and discovered the kids were not lying.  The house temperature was 43 and the furnace was not running.

We did some debugging over the phone to no avail.  You know, the normal stuff you try.  We power-cycled it a couple of times.  She got some boots on and went outside to check the air intake and exhaust for obstruction.  No joy.

Low sun cresting just over the fence top
at eleven in the morning.

This didn't seem like a situation that would wait until the weekend so I took a day off.  I have a friend who is a plumbing - heating guy and so I am able to call him up for some advice from time to time.  He suggested the trouble was in my flame sensor and told me how to go about pulling it out and cleaning it.  I had to call him back a few minutes later when I pulled the sensor out and a gush of water came out of the hole.

So here is what happened.  The basement got very cold.  As in very, very cold. The condensation pipe coming out of the bottom of the boiler has a trap in it just like a sink drain.  I suppose that keeps bugs from climbing up inside the burn chamber during the summer.  With the cold basement temperature the trap filled with water froze up.  The condensation could no longer drip out.

I hooked up an electric heater to blow on this area while I was cooking supper and about an hour later it drained.  I still cleaned up the flame sensor before I put it all back together.  But then the boiler lit right up.  It took about five hours to heat this barn back up.  Two rooms aren't getting any heat.  I expect the radiator pipes might frozen.  Now with the heat back on they should thaw out.

What a condensation tube trap looks
like and how it changes your life.

That was one crisis abated.  The kids bathroom was frozen up. That is a common occurrence.  It freezes up if it gets below twenty.  In fact we joke we can tell you the outdoor temperature based on what plumbing is frozen in the house.  Still though, setting new records breaks new records. 

As I sit here tonight four of the five bathrooms are frozen up.  The kitchen sink both hot and cold and the laundry room are all without water… So I will have a busy day of it tomorrow and look forward to warmer days ahead.

The flame detector re-installed in my boiler.