26 Days Without Heat in November
Insights about poverty and modern living while waiting for a new furnace.
On November 3, my elderly furnace kicked the bucket. The repair man declared that the heat exchanger had cracked and the furnace was no longer safe to operate. As a 42-year-old piece of equipment, a replacement heat exchanger was not available.
Since I had never bought a furnace before, I spent a week getting quotes from local HVAC companies. I hired a contractor within 6 days of furnace death, but I faced a 20-day wait for installation. November is naturally a busy season for furnace replacements, and I was just going to have to wait.
I live in Michigan, which is famous for weather both bad and cold. And November 2018 would prove to be of below average temperatures for my region. I couldn’t even catch some luck from global warming.
The HVAC contractor kindly lent us some space heaters to supplement the two that I already had, and I started my wait while temperatures hovered in the 30s during the day and dipped into the 20s most nights.
Living in the Past
As a writer who works from home, I was living in a home that I was only managing to keep in the 50s. My husband and kids at least got a break from the chill when they were at work and school, but I was living under…