āTwas the night after Thanksgiving, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even my HVAC unit!
Maybe itās happened to you too: thereās winter storm warnings all over the news and my weather apps. Weāre about to get more snow in November than we have ever had before. Ever. And I wake up the day after Thanksgiving to find that the house is cold. Colder than usual. Something is wrong.
I go down to look at my thermostat. I have the ancient kind, the rectangular kind where the controls are hidden beneath a panel that has long since fallen off. Itās so old that the once-white plastic is yellowed a bit. Itās not smart; not made by Google or Apple, not connected to my phone. But thatās not the confession I have to make. The confession that I have to make to you about my thermostat is that it is still set to run the same heating and cooling programs that Darth set it to before he left. Over five years of separation and over two years of divorce, and Iām still relying on his settings to keep me cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
Like many husbands, Darth took care of the house. Sure I did the lionesses share of the cleaning and laundry, but when it came down to the structure and mechanics of the house, I was happy to let him take the lead. If something needed fixing, he would make the call; or, more often, just fix it himself. āElbow grease millionaire,ā he called himself, though we were (and are!) far from millionaires.
So when I looked at the old, yellowed thermostat and saw that the numbers had not climbed back up to 70 after going down to 65 for the night, I groaned. And hereās the thing: even more frustrating than being cold and having my heat go out, was the fact that I had to handle it alone this time. The loneliness hurt more than the cold: Darth wasnāt here to go through this with me.
So if you too are a single woman who has never handled an HVAC malfunction in your home before, read on for my perspective, some helpful lingo, and an awareness of the choices that you have.
- Check the thermostat. If you are ever in this situation, step one is to make sure your thermostat is working. Iām going to tell you this now, so that when the HVAC technician asks you this question, you can seem like an old pro: simple thermostats like mine run on batteries. Theyāre just like one of your kidās toys. Mine uses 3 AAās. The recommendation is to change them every year, but they can probably last much longer. I knew that in this case it was not the batteries, because I changed them out over the summer (when my AC went out, which is another story).
- Call for help. Hopefully you have a trusted, reasonably priced HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) professional who has already been to your home, knows your system, and wonāt charge you a fee just to come to your house. Or maybe you have an ex or a friend who is willing to come over and check things out. I had a collection of companies and phone numbers that I had researched post-divorce, and I started with the company that my neighbor recommended who had been out to service my air conditioning in the past. They charged $150 just to come to my house.
- Once the friend or professional gives their assessment, PAUSE. This is the step that Iām SO grateful for in this instance. I was lucky that my guy could come out within a few hours of the heat going out. After 10 minutes he showed me a picture of the part that I needed: a draft inducer motor. It looked like a snail and was a little bigger than a grapefruit. The cost to have him install it? $3300. I stood there in my house, growing colder by the minute, shocked but not surprised. My mind started doing calculations: this was almost the price of a new furnace, maybe I just need a new one, I donāt want to spend my emergency funds on this and I probably need a new AC unit soon, maybe I just do it all at once, but thereās a snowstorm coming in a few hours what do I do what do I do what do I do?
- Give yourself time. You do have it. When I realized that this was way too big of a decision to make all at once, I told my technician that I was not ready to make a decision. He left. I took the dog for a walk. I made some phone calls and asked for a second opinion.
- Share what youāre going through. I ran into my neighbors and when they asked how I was, I said my heat had stopped working. Normally I would NOT do this at all costs. I am fine; Iām always fine. Iām taking care of it. But I felt over my head. So I calmly told them what was going on. They offered heaters ā they had a few in the garage. Heaters! I had not even thought of this. Of course ā things exist to make homes warmer. But that had not even occurred to me yet. I took them up on their offer. Then, after describing the broken part, I found out that a family member had fixed the same part on their furnace a few years before. They offered to fix mine, and, once I provided the serial number on my furnace, helped me find the part on Amazon for $180.
- Negotiate what you can handle. Everything seems to be working in my favor now, right? Well, hereās the kicker: the part I needed would not arrive for 6 days. Not even with Amazon Prime. Again, I had options: friends and family willing to take me and the dog in, hotels, a $3000 fixā¦ But in the end I stuck in out with three portable heaters. I kept one in the downstairs bath where the pipes were most likely to freeze. I used one to warm up the bedroom before going to sleep. I kept one trained on me. At first I tried to keep the whole house warm. But then I realized I had to keep me warm instead. If I wanted heat, I had to bring it closer to me.
I had been used to a house that was pretty warm all winter. So warm that I usually donāt wear socks. Well, what I discovered is that itās possible to survive at temps much lower than where we set our thermostats. I had wool socks, fleece pants, turtlenecks, blankets. When it got really chilly I wore a hat or my coat, but that wasnāt often. I did not run the heaters at night or when I was gone, for safety reasons. And I slept GREAT. Seriously, some of the best sleep Iāve ever had. (Sleep experts recommend a temp of 60-67 degrees Fahrenheit. My room probably hovered a few degrees below that 60-degree mark).
On the final night of my cold week, temps went down to 15 degrees overnight. The next morning, my family member came and installed the part. It took him about 20 minutes. And my heat has been working ever since. Iām not gonna lie, itās nice.
But thereās a part of me that misses the cold, just a little. Iām grateful for the reminder that, as a single woman, there are still people looking out for me ā bringing heat ā even if I no longer have a super DIYer as a husband. And Iām grateful for the reminder that things I have never imagined are possible (even if it is living in a house where the thermostat hovers around 50 degrees!) and for the lesson that if I want heat, sometimes I might have to ask for it.
Cue Destinyās Child:
āI’m a survivor
I’m not gon’ give up
I’m not gon’ stop
I’m gon’ work harder
I’m a survivor
I’m gonna make it
I will survive
Keep on survivin’ā
Have a survival story of learning to ask for help? Share it in the comments!