The last couple of weeks had been really warm, and we hadn’t used the furnace.
My husband shut the furnace off, thinking that spring was already here, and we wouldn’t need the furnace anymore this year.
I guess we should have paid more attention to the weather forecast. Three days later, the bottom dropped out on the temperatures, and we had ice on the ground. It was so cold when we got out of bed that I was looking for heavy clothing. As the day went on, it steadily got colder, and my husband was trying to turn the furnace back on. I sat on the sofa wrapped in a blanket, dressed in a sweatshirt and jacket, and shivering. He had his winter jacket on, while trying to get the fireplace burning so we had heat while he tried to get the furnace to turn back on. I heard him snarling in the basement, but his snarling wasn’t working. No amount of snarling was getting the furnace to turn on. I called the HVAC company and told them what had happened. That afternoon, the HVAC technician was at the house working on the furnace. He told my husband that if he had a fireplace, he wouldn’t worry about the furnace, and have it fixed in the summer. We wouldn’t have needed to pay for an extra service call. When my husband told me what he said, I laughed. I told him we should have thought of that. At least he didn’t need to go out and cut firewood to keep the fireplace running. The furnace is running again.