Braddock Journey

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Heating for the house has been like a pinball game. We’ve been bounced all over the place.

At first we hoped to use the boiler and steam heat system that came in the house. Then reason upon reason piled up against that option. Rumors that it didn’t work four years ago, rusted radiators, removed chimney ...

Next we were going to put in a forced air system with the help of a friend who does it professionally, installing the vents under his direction and having the furnace installed. They planned the runs and built out all the walls to accommodate. Most vents needed to be along the load bearing wall, we couldn’t cut into it to make a straight shot to the second and third floors but we also didn’t want to lose efficiency. The extra framing also provided more room for thick insulation.

(Our house is an insulated beast. Seriously ... it was 9 degrees (and felt like negative 2) this week and the water bottles inside our unheated house weren’t frozen.)

Then all of the work became overwhelming and installing our own heating system seemed like a bad idea. We started getting bids from contractors.

At some point we gave up on forced air. I think it was when the only quote came in at $12,500. The shock of the price blinded me to the details, which I later discovered also included air conditioning. But that steered us into looking for alternatives. I’ve never been a huge fan of forced air heating systems, probably because I’ve never had one. I grew up in South Florida with forced air cooling, which was fantastic. Then I moved to Alaska where I experienced boilers with baseboards, boilers with radiators, radiant heat, wood stoves, pellet stoves, direct vent heat systems like Monitor or Toyo stoves (Rinnai on the East coast we’ve learned) ... but I don’t recall anyone having forced air heat.

We had a couple more heating companies come in to give us ideas and prices. Recessed electric heaters seemed the best option. The house we rented in Portland used these electric heaters, and we were there for winter. They worked well and we had the ability to control temperature by room without the added installation of “zones.” Running on electric also seems less expensive here, the gas prices are high and everyone bitches and moans about their gas bills. We figured with an inexpensive electric heat system (under $3,000) we could upgrade to solar panels to support the heat before the electricity rates go up. We’ve heard that will happen in three years.

But then the company that we were working with, Chuba, fell off the face of the earth. We said yes, please come and install this system. Mike Chuba stopped in, looked at our breaker box. I put him in touch with Nicolas Electric to make sure it was on the up and up. They talked. Then Chuba never returned my calls again. So we started getting another round of quotes. My parents came to town for Thanksgiving and the Obscurae show, and they convinced me to go for broke (literally) and get the forced air heating system instead of electric baseboards. All the quotes were coming in around $9,500—including that first one that was $12,500 because I realized there was an A/C unit in there and asked for a revised estimate. That was still a painfully high price to pay, but our work on the house is halted until there’s heat to dry the drywall mud and the tile adhesive and grout for the floor.

I had been meeting heating companies at the house for a week, still waiting on most of their estimates, when John suggested I get in touch with Brian Whitney (the roof miracle worker) and ask for his heating contact. The day I called Beam Heating Bob Beam showed up at the house. He wrote an estimate immediately after looking around. That was the fastest anyone came to the house and the most instantaneous quote of all time ... As an added bonus the installation was around $5,000. We jumped on it. The only drawback was that he was booked through Christmas and maybe even until January.

It was that day that I realized—holy shit! It’s almost Christmas! (I had 9 days and no cards, no inkling of the holiday spirit ... I’ve since caught up ...)

The good news came Friday morning when Bob started calling at 7:15am and repeatedly called (16 times) until I answered around 9am to tell me that they could start that day. If only I were a morning person and Kevin hadn’t just gotten back from Alaska, keeping us up until 3am because he’s four hours off. I turn off my phone when I don’t expect to have anything to do early, I despise being woken up by a phone. But, by the time I did answer Bob still had one guy who could come over; earlier he had three.

Work officially started on installing our Lennox Elite Series Home Comfort System G51 single-stage, high-efficiency furnace that morning. (Yes, that’s an ad ... hah! I’m reading directly from my brochure, I’m just so happy there is something in my house not running on kerosene that will keep it warm—that it is Energy Star qualified just makes me happier.) They came back yesterday to “hit it hard” and got the furnace hooked up so that Equitable can turn on the gas Friday. Today they are clearing out the old boiler. All of the vents aren’t hooked up yet, but there IS a furnace in my basement!

Beam Heating has been making our holiday wishes come true. All we’ve wanted for months were walls and heat. With heat, we can finish putting up the walls…