The infernal noise has ended and once again I can hear my own thoughts
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We bought our house 14 years ago in the middle of winter. So naturally the first thing we saw when we walked in was a cozy fire roaring and crackling in the fire place. It was awesome and I was instantly sold. I’m sure the real estate agent saw the word sucker tattooed on my forehead.
In my defense, I did not have bangs back then.
So we walked around oohing and aahing until a loud noise started rumbling from the bowels of the house. We looked at the real estate agent and asked, “What’s that noise?”
It sounded like a 747 getting ready to take off. Alright, that’s an exaggeration. It sounded like a kid’s turbo-powered remote control airplane flying relentlessly about the house.
The agent said, “That’s the furnace; it’s forced air.” He quickly followed up with, “It’s new, they just replaced it.”
Because I was stupid inexperienced and in love with the house, I decided I could overlook that rumbling noise. And we quickly got used to it. In fact I used to turn the fan on when I banished a kid, mid-tantrum, to her bedroom on the second floor. The fan from the furnace drowned out her protests.
That’s right — we made icy cold lemonade out of lemons.
But that furnace kicks on repeatedly in the middle of winter. And everyone — every last person who steps foot in this house — becomes startled when the heat or the air conditioning comes on and immediately asks, “What’s that noise?”
That’s when I pull out the real estate agent’s answer, “That’s the furnace; it’s forced air.” I don’t even know what the hell forced air is. It’s like a euphemism for “the sound that will drive you to insanity if you let it.”
But as I said, we got used to it. Until last Friday when it got louder and louder and then really did sound like a 747 taking off from our living room. Suddenly it started to smell like burning metal and then it got really cold in here.
The furnace died and naturally it died on Friday night. But thankfully the heating and cooling people never rest so they showed up on Saturday morning to deliver the bad news. The guy gave me a really good, detailed explanation for why the furnace made so much noise.
I’m paraphrasing, but it was too big for the house. It ran constantly in an effort to cool the motor. So the heat would come on for 15 minutes or so, it would stop for a minute and then the fan would come on for 15 minutes or so. All. Winter. Long.
He explained something about duct work and the lack of it, insufficient cold air returns and pushing air against gravity to heat or cool the house. Somehow all of that made a lot of noise.
It was like that Far Side cartoon of what dogs hear when humans talk. The dog hears, “Blah blah blah blah, Ginger. Blah, blah, blah!”
I heard, “Blah blah blah blah, noise. Blah, blah, blah loud noise!”
But now we have heat and it’s quiet. I have no idea how they did it and I don’t care. For all I know, one of the guys stood in the basement for eight hours banging a hammer against a loose piece of sheet metal while the other one waved a magic wand.
It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that I can’t hear the furnace. When they turned it on I could smell the heat starting but I couldn’t hear anything so I went into the basement to ask if it was working. It’s working, gingah. It’s working very well.
I don’t know how long I’ll continue to ask, “Is it on?” while my hand hovers over the register. But I do know I’ll never have to say the words “forced air” again.
Tags: Things that actually make me happy, Things that make me obsess
well at least you turned lemons into a funny post. loved the far side cartoon up there. used to have a FS calendar. that’s so true, people talk in technical terms and all we really hear is blah blah blah. when asked to repeat, what else can we say but forced air.
glad it’s all warm again. i can’t stand the cold and had to do the oven thing once in a while. it works.
You know, blogging has sort of changed how I look at things that normally really tick me off. Now, don’t get me wrong. I still get really ticked off but it seems to provide some fodder for the old blog.
We had the oven at 450 for a long time all weekend and throughout Monday while they were working on it.
It’s actually warm in our basement now. I seriously cannot believe that, but it’s awesome!
i would swear on a stack of bibles that i thought you responded to this comment this morning at
January 19, 2010 at 2:26 AM
i said, wow, cardiogirl can’t sleep and is up earlier than normal. it’s me that needs to get some sleep or a seeing eye dog. not even smart enough to notice the date says january 19. well i never know what the date is until i hover over my computer clock with my cursor.
Thankfully I haven’t been up *that* early in a long while. Although a few years ago I was routinely up around that time. That’s when I was introduced to my good friend Lunesta.
Thankfully I was able to break up with her a couple years ago.
Wow. It’s too bad it waited 14 years to go kaplooie – you might have been able to get the work done by the previous owners (lack of disclosure) or, since it was new, under warranty.
All that “forced air” means is you have a furnace that heats air and a fan blows the warmed air through the ductwork and out the grills throughout your house. The return air vents suck air back into the furnace to be reheated…etc etc.
I have never heard of a furnace being too big and needing to run a the fan to cool itself, however. Sounds fishy to me. Like a car mechanic telling you that your car’s gerfunkle was rubbing against the floundicator, causing the advanced carbon replacement and transfer system to get clogged.
He said the size of the furnace should be dictated by the square footage of the house. Ours is small — 1200 sq. ft. and this furnace seems to run (quietly) and then that mofo stays off until it’s time to re-heat. Like it should.
I know he said we did not have enough cold air returns so the heat in the house was not circulating like it should be. They also put three additional vents in the house and things are copacetic.
It was worth the new gerfunkle, is what I’m saying.
1200? No wonder you hate snow days so much.
Yes, it’s a tight little cracker box when all five of us are here competing for air space.
And can you believe you put up with that noise all those years???! Ugh. I hate when I do stuff like that.
No. Now that I have heard the difference I seriously cannot believe I lived with that for so long. Oy vey, sister.
It. WAS. LOUD!
It sounds like the machine was doing its work, but it was overefficient, and the noise was caused by it having to cool itself down.
Love the shoe.
Yeah, it was definitely workin’ overtime and that was highly annoying.
I like that one, too.
Ah yes. Forced air. My parents’ house had forced air central heating when I was a kid and the dog used to go up and press her nose against the vent for the warmth so hard she spent most of her time with a corrugated nose!
I love the thought of a dog with a corrugated nose — awesome imagery, SJAT.
That’s another weird change. The heat used to blow really hard out of the floor vent — enough to raise my kid’s skirt in the air. Now it almost seeps out of the vent. And yet it’s warm in here and there’s barely any noise.
It’s crazy.
I have forced air and it’s kinda loud, I’m assuming it’s the correct size as it looks older than me.
I hope it wasn’t too expensive.
I’m not sure if the fact that it was forced air exclusively meant it was loud or not. But that’s the explanation the guy gave to us.
It wasn’t too bad and in the middle of January having heat again was worth every penny.
Uh, yeah. Our furnace didn’t exactly keep up with our single digit temps two weeks ago and my kitchen is in it’s own little room basically so it’s not much help. That’s why I had the motivation to haul an entire truck load/rick of firewood upstairs to my apartment. I’m a sucker for a roaring fire myself.
I’m impressed Liz. We had a few fires in our fireplace and now we have candles in there. They’re those thick squat candles of varying heights so they look really cool lit up, but they do not heat anything. At all.
I can imagine blazing fires with small children just isn’t worth the hassle.
Personally I prefer forced air. Costs much less to service than a boiler. I had a boiler at my old house and it was crazy expensive when the pump died. In fact a new pump cost MORE than a whole new furnace at my current house. Not to mention the bleeding of the radiators and the noise if you don’t bleed them.
I have no clue what a boiler is, but after hearing about that I’d pick forced air, too. And the idea of bleeding a radiator seems horrifying and scary, since I have no idea what that means, either.
I’m glad you’re not living with a boiler anymore.
glad to hear you are back in the warmth!
Amen sister! It’s so easy to take it for granted when it’s working well.
I had to laugh this morning when I got my kids up and turned the TV on. In the past, when the furnace was running I had to turn the volume from 8 to 13 so we could hear it over the noise.
This morning, while the heat was on, I realized I could keep the volume at 8. What an awesome benefit!
But how will you drown out your children now?
I’m going to have to wear my mp3 player and earphones, I think.
Someone really needs to come up with a mute button for children. I’d pay serious money for that. They could still let their lips flap and move, only without sound.
They did, it’s called duct tape.
Too harsh?
(laughs) In my experience, that just muffles the sound.
I worked for my dad for a few years (he has an HVAC company) and I remember some of those forced-air furnaces. The worst were boilers. I have to say, though, knowing that stuff makes picking out rentals much easier. Glad you could get a new unit! Maybe you need to just start blasting Oldies to drown out the complaining now?
I do like the idea of blasting some music to cover the screams. Oh — I’ve got it! They absolutely hate my song, “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane” by Miss Bette Davis. I’ll have to blast that next time one of them gets on my nerves.
My mother used Gregorian Chants.
“For all I know, one of the guys stood in the basement for eight hours banging a hammer against a loose piece of sheet metal while the other one waved a magic wand.” Love this! :)
We have forced air, which I believe to mean that the furnace heats air, and then a fan forces said air through the vents.
Our problem is we don’t have ducts upstairs, so we rely on the heat rising to heat the upstairs. It doesn’t do this, so we have “space heaters” in each room upstairs. Luckily they don’t heat all of space, just the space in our rooms. That would be awkward if we melted Saturn’s rings or something.
Sometimes I do feel like they perform some sort of mumbo jumbo and then say, “That’ll be $1,500, please.”
I, for one, am relieved that your space heaters are confined to your house because I don’t need Saturn exploding over here.
This is one of those times where all the people ahead of me said everything I was going to say and so all I’m gonna say now is that I love you and your writing. Gingah.
Oh Kathy (swipes hand in the air with false hubris) go on!
Thanks woman!
Our heater died in NM after three years of freezing cold house in the winter. I had my very first paycheck from building a website and we were moving to Texas in three weeks and WHERE did my paycheck go?
That’s right. New heater in house I wouldn’t be living in.
They had to open all the windows in the house while they ran it on high to blow out the burned-oil smell which happens with all new furnaces. It was about 20 degrees outside. I realized that with the new heater & all the windows open, my house was getting warmer THAN IT HAD EVER BEEN BEFORE. So, so sad.
Then we moved in here in our new home in Texas & guess what was the FIRST thing that happened? Heater broken, same problem. At least I still live in this house & didn’t buy one for someone else.
SO. The real reason I’m here. Ahem. What’s up with the book you wrote during Nano? Should I go back through your archives to find out? Is it still marinating in a drawer? (Always a good plan to let it sit for a long while so you can read it fresh.) Whasssup with it???
Oy. At least you’re finally experiencing the heat in your own house for more than a month, eh?
Alrighty. I have been letting it marinate. I did tidy up the first 30 pages.
And then let it sit again. I do need to get on a writing schedule again. I really do have about 78% of the story done. I just need to fully fill in the ending and then fluff it up, you know?
But I have been taking a break from it. That’s funny, because in November I couldn’t imagine walking away from it for more than a day or two.
[...] idea why that is and maybe I’ll be surprised today, but I’m expecting the worst. Okay, the worst was last January when the 15-year-old furnace died and we replaced the whole thing. That cost a hell of a lot more than one grand. So this actually could be [...]