She's a beauty, huh? All curvy and strong and complex with just the right amount of coppery shine tossed in. She sparkles. She actually sparkles!
We cranked her up last weekend when the outside temps dipped into the 40s and I felt in my very bones the single degree drop from 67 to 66. With a couple of button pushes on the thermostat, clink, she was ON.
You just wouldn't believe the racket we heard one floor up.
Bam! went one radiator
Hissss! went another
POP!
POP POP POP!!!
Clang! Bang! Radiators all over the house are waking up from a summer hibernation.
Thunk!
POP!!! POP!!! POP!!! HISSSSSSS! All radiators fully operational
And then, WOOOOOOOOSH!
That one concerned us, so Curt ventured to the basement while I cheered him on from the safety of the couch. When he emerged, soot-less and fancy-free, it was to announce that the boiler had successfully filled itself with water.
This might seem like a no-brainer, but in our experience, steam heat boilers don't necessarily do this on their own. Take last winter when we had to stomp down to the basement, rotate the water-fill valve on the old boiler (who was definitely not shiny), and wait till the clear beaker-looking pipe filled to the black Sharpie line with heat-producing water. Only then would the old boiler clunk on and fire up.
We did this every six hours.
All North Polar Vortex winter long.
If you missed the 6-hour refill mark, you were cut off.
This reminds me of the time Mom and Dad came to visit us back in the early '90s up on King George Avenue. Curt was at work on this freezing weekday morning, perhaps a snow day since I was at home. It felt chilly in our old house when I woke up. I wrapped my robe around me and went searching for Mom and Dad. They weren't upstairs in the guest room or bathroom. Not downstairs in the kitchen or living room. Certainly not outside. They were missing. I finally found them in the basement huddled by the furnace trying to get warm. Turns out, the thermostat was set to cool down during the day and heat up in the evenings when we were home, and I could not figure out how to reset it to make the furnace turn back on. We had to call Curt at work to come rescue us. Dad declared every house we ever lived in after that was too cold.
And there's the other spot of glory in this boiler, besides its self-filling water feature. This is a surprise birthday gift to my family from my mom.
Impossible, you say? She did pass away a year ago last Friday. Last year for my 45th birthday, she gave me an unconscious reflexive grin from the cardiac ICU, four days before she would be reunited with Dad and Michelle and in the presence of Jesus. But this year there was no promise of a card or phone call or surprise package. Until the day a letter came from MetLife to me, her beneficiary, seeking to close her account. After sending the appropriate forms and a copy of the death certificate, we got a check for 10 times what we figured. Enough for a new steam heat boiler. Enough to keep us from huddling by the old one in the basement on cold winter days. Or even fuming down the steps to refill it every six hours. Enough to keep us warm for decades to come. How providential.
Thanks, Mom.
Your Dad, my brother, told me he would never go visit you in the winter time again. He said he did not thaw out until 3 days after he got home. I do not need to tell you the "man cave " was about 80 degrees. I would actually have to go outside to cool off. So I can see how he said it was to cold when you are use to 80 degrees. He was so funny talking about that. So glad he never came to visit me in the winter. lol
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