Wind Chill Warning, and Our Furnace is Out

Friday morning.

The weather station at Sauk Centre’s municipal airport has been offline for a few days.

In places like, say, New York City or Seattle, I suspect this would be a “crisis.”

Around here, it’s January.

A bit more seriously, this household’s furnace stopped working overnight.

When I woke up this morning — that’s always a good thing — I noticed that someone had thrown an extra blanket over me, and that the room was cooler than usual.

The kitchen was chilly, too, and an electric space heater was valiantly glowing. My son confirmed my suspicion, that our furnace was offline.

I didn’t ask if someone had called repair services. Our equipment documentation binder was open to the furnace pocket. That question’s answer was obvious.

Later Friday Morning

The temperature at my desk was around 58° Fahrenheit. I gather that other rooms were a little cooler, maybe 55° or so. That’s the ground floor. I figure upstairs it would be significantly cooler.

Not bad, considering that someone first noticed the furnace issue around 1:00 a.m. — this old converted American Foursquare¹ farmhouse retains heat rather well.

It’s now 10:35 a.m. and a service tech has been here. I don’t know what the problem was, but the furnace is working again and it’s now around 66° here at my desk. My wife moved a space heater to the north room, where I am, bless her.

Looks like I won’t be alternating between defrosting my fingers and writing today, after all.

The furnace isn’t exactly fixed. Seems that there’s a sticky valve that needs replacing.

The system is working, for the moment, and may continue doing so until a replacement part comes in. Which will, I trust, be in a few days.

On the other hand, our van’s steering went kaput yesterday and I haven’t heard when that’ll get taken care of.

More, and less, of the same:

• Webcam: Sauk Centre MN
  (Still living in a white Christmas.)
• “Wind Chill Warning, Weather Advisory, Health and Me”
  (January 4, 2022)
• “Jesus, Human on His Mother’s Side: the Incarnation”
  (December 25, 2021)
• “A Poem and a Picture: Pip’s Christmas”
  (December 24, 2021)
• “Sauk Centre, Minnesota: First Winter Snow”
  (November 12, 2021)

¹ It’s also called Prairie Box:

• Wikipedia
  • American Foursquare
• The American Foursquare
  Bill Kibbel, Contributing Writer; Old Houses; House Styles; oldhouseweb