Run! Run! Run!

This is what hubby and I have been doing the last few days.

We woke up recently one morning to no heat. Well, DH is one to check everything out thoroughly before he'll call in a repairman! The disadvantage to all this is the fact that we live in an extremely cold climate. The high the last few days has been in the low 20's. Yeah, baby, it's cold outside!

Hubby has determined that it's our thermostat that is malfunctioning. I mean, the whole house is full of antiquish things that have just never been replaced. For example, the furnace is 45 years old! I recently replaced my 43 year old gas dryer (that's almost as old as I am, but belonged to the previous owner who never replaced anything)!

I'm not sure how old the thermostat is, but it is so old that it has one of those little bulbs of mercury that balances within it's glass container, then 'clunk' when it hits a certain angle, it creates a spark, then the furnace turns on. Sounds ancient, doesn't it? Well, it is.

After serfing the web for a few nights (as I said, he's thorough), hubby finally found one to replace it. The company that makes these particular thermostats doesn't even sell them anymore, they outsource them to another company which sells them.

Okay, so I ordered 2 thermostats, because we have a separate thermostat for upstairs and we decided we might as well replace both of them.

So in the mean time while waiting for the thermostats to be shipped to us, we have the whole routine figured out to keep our house at an 'almost' acceptable temperature. It's called the Run! Run! Run! routine!

If we hook the thermostats up and let them try to do their jobs they either run the furnace to the point that the temperature is almost 80 degrees or they don't work at all and the furnace turns off!

So, we've opted to manually turn the furnace off and on during the day to suit our needs. The only problem is that hubby and I both work outside the home, so we are constantly running to the furnace the minute one of us is coming into or leaving the house!

Hubby gets up very early and turns the furnace on. I leave it on when I go off to work as it's still trying to maintain a temperature that doesn't feel like the freezer chest, so I let it run while I'm at work.

Then, I return home for lunch and I RUN! to the basement to turn it off, because it's usually creeping up towards 75-76 degrees.

Then, I go back to work and I return home later in the day and RUN! to the basement to turn the furnace back on. By that time, it's reached around 62-64 degrees. Brr! Too cold for me!

Then hubby comes home and he needs to RUN! to the furnace to turn it off as I'm starting to cook dinner and it's hot again!

Then we usually WALK to the basement before bed to turn it back off for the night. We repeat the whole process the next day! Ugh! It's wearing thin, but my girlfriend told me, "Just be thankful the furnace runs manually. If it wasn't running at all, you'd be freezing."

Ah, yes, I will be thankful for the little things in life!

I hope those thermostats come in real soon! Although, I can also be thankful for all the exercise that I'm getting by the Run! Run! Run! routine. Maybe, I'll lose a few pounds!