Heat! Heat is nice.

The floor furnace my folks used for years became unreliable. I have no idea how old the furnace was. It wasn't new when we bought the house in 1960. It got to the point that gas company wouldn't turn the gas back on unless the furnace was replaced. The last winter my son Joe spent in the house, he used an electric monstrosity that came from an old motel room. It heats quite well, but you can't hear because the fan is so noisy.

That wasn't for us. We researched our options and decided on a gas radiant heater. Pat found ours at Bluestem Farm and Ranch Supply in Emporia. He and Joe installed it on a Friday. The wall between the big window and the front door already housed the air conditioner, so they mounted the wall heater under the A/C unit. (In the picture you can see the both the new heater and the old furnace. The odd black object is a snoopy Furball.)

Since Pat was the smaller of the two, he was elected to crawl under the house to run the gas line from the furnace to the heater. There is headroom under there! Pat could actually sit up. Then he saw the foundation. The house isn't exactly a pier and beam construction. The perimeter of nearly every room of the house is supported by its own handlaid rock wall. Doorways have been cut through or pushed through to allow access to various parts of the house. Pat said it's no wonder the house doesn't settle. It can't.

By the time the gas line was run and the new heater in place, Pat felt like a little kid who had been rolling in the sandbox. He said he hadn't been that dirty since he was three. When I got home from work, he and Joe were making dibs on the shower. We were all ready to fire it up, but we had to wait for the gas company to reinstall the meter. They didn't come until the following Thursday.

Ah, but we're warm now! We're keeping the old furnace covered with a rug. Pat and Joe will remove it next Spring when we lay the new floor.