It was startlingly warm here yesterday, in the high 50s. And today its raining heavily and 34°. I'll take it. For at least a few days, I'm not going to complain about the weather.
In fact, yesterday I was downright lucky. Sunday morning about 9 am when I went downstairs, I immediately noticed it was rather cool. The thermostat said 59°. The gas furnace could not ignite, so I guessed it was a failed glow plug. I called the hvac guys, who said they could make it sometime between 3 and 7 pm.
I still had heat upstairs, but this was my first opportunity in 20 years to see just how well my fireplace can work by itself. It burns natural gas, and when I use it, I usually throttle it down a good bit. Yesterday, I lit it around 9 am and let it run wide open all day. Once all the bricks got hot, it did surprisingly well.
At around 6 pm, the repair guy showed up. He replaced the failed glow plug, and was ready to leave in about half an hour. I wrote a check and he left right when Denver blew the first play after kickoff giving Seattle 2 points. My family room was 67° from the fireplace alone. At the time it was about 52° outside, so I don't know how well it would have worked if it was a really cold day. I'm glad it wasn't.
All the rain here today is cold and very wet, but we have no snow or ice
. And it did wash away all the dried salt we had covering all the roads and cars.
