All Mod Cons pt. 2

So, this is finally an update to a project that has been (sort of) underway since Labor Day weekend. That weekend, we had planned to remove the excess chimney, but it turned out we didn't have quite the tools we needed and weren't quite sure the weather was going to be good enough to warrant putting a hole in the roof. So instead, we tackled the furnace.

First, there was the matter of unhooking and removing the old furnace. We were anticipating that this might be a huge, heavy job... but surprisingly, it mostly wasn't. It came out easily, and while taking it out the back stairs was awkward, it was significantly easier than when we attempted to do the same thing with the old water heater.

Out with the old!

Then we were faced with the somewhat more daunting task of getting the new furnace installed. This furnace had come out of our primary house when we had that furnace replaced over a year ago, so it had been sitting in the farmhouse basement for awhile surrounded by random pieces of ducting that we hoped would be useful. The initial work took most of an afternoon with my dad getting the gas lines run around to where the new hookups were, and Chris and I trying to figure out how to put a square peg in a round hole -- a.k.a., getting the old duct work to align with the new furnace.

In with the new(er)

By the end of the day, we had everything pretty roughed in, but it took Chris and I a few more weekends to get everything really set to go. Then there were some other matters to attend to. For one, the house wasn't that clean when we moved in, and the furnace hadn't been run in something like 2 - 15 years, so we were confident that if the ducts were just full of dust, we could count ourselves lucky.

We initially thought that we might be able to tape some rags onto the end of chimney sweeping poles and run those through the ducts, but we quickly discovered that even a much more flexible piece of PVC just wasn't flexible enough to make the nearly 90 degree angle through the vents. Fortunately, then Chris realized that we had a very long hose that was exactly the same size as the hose on the shopvac (the hose had previously been employed draining the flooded basement). So we attached that to the vacuum, and down the holes it went.

This job sucks.

Then there was the matter of the chimney itself, which we weren't positive was actually open, which is an important part of the function of a chimney. We kept hoping to get a friend with a drone to come up and look at it for us, but then Chris answered the question in the way that people presumably answered this question for centuries before drones came along... we stuck a mirror into the chimney and looked up.

Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is daylight coming through the chimney opening.

The chimney was open. The ducts were clean-ish. Everything was installed. Chris and one of his buddies even stopped up one day and brought the stove in from the lean-to where it had been languishing for the past year and a half.

Just like a real kitchen!

So, yesterday was the moment of truth... we scheduled DTE to come out and turn on the gas. In an unexpected turn of events, they said a technician would arrive between 12 and 4 p.m., and he actually arrived by 12:30, making this possibly the most timely service call ever.

DTE said "let there be heat!" And there was heat. And it was good.

The furnace was the easy part. Despite having sat for quite awhile, it fired right up and immediately started pumping lovely heat throughout the house. The initial whoomph did also blow a bunch of nastiness out of the ducts, but... I guess they're cleaner now?

The stove was actually the hard part because when we turned on the gas at the appliance... nothing happened. There wasn't even gas coming through the lines. This was odd, especially since the furnace was already blowing steadily -- a clear indicator that the gas was coming into the house just fine. Chris and the gas technician looked around the basement a few times trying to see if there was another shutoff somewhere, but couldn't find anything. We all stared deeply into the creepy crawlspace that runs under the kitchen, hoping the flashlight would not hit a shutoff valve that would require someone to actually slither under there. We discussed breaking a pipe open to see if a blockage could be discovered by snaking wire through the pipes. Then we all looked one more time, and I found the shutoff, and then everything worked out just fine.

Cooking celebration ramen. As one does.

It should be noted that about 30 seconds after taking the picture above, I had both the coat and hat off because it was warming up significantly in the house.

So that's how it came to be that two years and three days after initially purchasing the farmhouse, we now have central heat and a working range.