Room For All

Welcome to Wondercafe2!

A community where we discuss, share, and have some fun together. Join today and become a part of it!

Register Log in
Carolla said:
I think you are so right about this Nancy!! Listening well, patiently, and to understand not just prep a response or rebuttal is a crucial and often missing life skill IMO.
Click to expand...

I agree that good listening is a necessary tool - one that, unfortunately, doesn't seem to show up often enough in peoples' lives. Yesterday I was fortunate in spending time with two very good listeners. There is something I find really uplifting about feeling 'heard'. They each listened, cut through the words to the feelings, gently pointed me in healthier directions. So grateful they sent me on along my path with renewed hope and confidence in my future and how to move towards it.
 
KayTheCurler said:
I agree that good listening is a necessary tool - one that, unfortunately, doesn't seem to show up often enough in peoples' lives. Yesterday I was fortunate in spending time with two very good listeners. There is something I find really uplifting about feeling 'heard'. They each listened, cut through the words to the feelings, gently pointed me in healthier directions. So grateful they sent me on along my path with renewed hope and confidence in my future and how to move towards it.
Click to expand...

This is 1/3 in conflict to the 3 monkey rule !
 
Nancy said:
How awful, Chemgal! Hope it gets worked out satisfactorily. We heat with baseboard heaters (expensive, I know), and an airtight woodstove. If the power goes out, we can actually cook on the woodstove, and, of course, we could start burning paper (there go my sermons) and furniture if necessary. Our smallish house is not designed to have space for a furnace, so this is our best option, and so far it is working.
Click to expand...
I don't know how well that would work here.

No problems with power and we do have one space heater at least. We have the gas fireplace running right now too, but we weren't comfortable running it all night, maybe if we were actually sleeping downstairs we would have. As it was, it was on while we were awake with us not being by there which we don't typically do.

I am hoping for a simple fix as the house is chilly and ATCO claims they don't do repairs, although I have heard from others that they actually do if they have the part on hand and it doesn't take too long. It's an early appointment (could show up anytime now) so we can hopefully get a paid company out within business hours if possible. If ATCO doesn't fix it though I'm going to have to figure out some baking I think - without making a trip to go buy any extra ingredients I don't already have.

At least it's not super cold outside, but still, below freezing.
 
We have a gas furnace that has held up pretty well. It's almost 20 years old and has only had the blower changed out. We do get it cleaned and inspected periodically by a friend who owns a heating/AC business (his son used to go to school with ours). I suppose if it croaked, we would hunker down in the family room and put the gas fireplace on. With door closed and the fan running we can get it pretty warm in there with just the fireplace. We also have a small electric heater that we can move from room to room and it has enough juice to warm up one of our small rooms as long as we close the door.
 
Mendalla said:
We have a gas furnace that has held up pretty well. It's almost 20 years old and has only had the blower changed out. We do get it cleaned and inspected periodically by a friend who owns a heating/AC business (his son used to go to school with ours). I suppose if it croaked, we would hunker down in the family room and put the gas fireplace on. With door closed and the fan running we can get it pretty warm in there with just the fireplace. We also have a small electric heater that we can move from room to room and it has enough juice to warm up one of our small rooms as long as we close the door.
Click to expand...
Downstairs is open concept, so unless we hang some sheets or something, not much we can do. It's actually pretty good right now, although the hallway doesn't seem to be too warm.
Chemguy said space heaters can give off a reasonable amount of CO, I was surprised to hear that, so he wanted to keep the door open to the bedroom.
 
Space heaters of combustion type may give off fumes of all kinds ... especially if not supplied with adequate oxygen ... rule of thumb I believe was some 4-6 square inches of ventilation air from exterior! This even happens with gas heaters if they don;t get adequate oxygen and venting of combustion gasses ...
 
If your house is still cold here are my fixes
Self-clean your oven (if it is self-cleaning) that is a lot of heat into the kitchen. If not bake something or cook something
Time to do laundry the washer and dryer both add heat to the house.
Here is hoping it is fixed soon.
 
ChemGal said:
Downstairs is open concept
Click to expand...

We avoided open concept for other reasons but the decision has obviously helped with heating as well. Real reason was cooking. In an open concept house, the grease and smell from Chinese cooking ends up everywhere.
 
Tabitha said:
If your house is still cold here are my fixes
Self-clean your oven (if it is self-cleaning) that is a lot of heat into the kitchen. If not bake something or cook something
Time to do laundry the washer and dryer both add heat to the house.
Here is hoping it is fixed soon.
Click to expand...
Shouldn't be home and windows should be open when self-cleaning the oven. Laundry is going.
I'll probably be baking, although need to watch that with when people are here, we need to get a private company out as ATCO couldn't figure out the specific problem. Based on the potentials though, there's a good chance we'll just need a new furnace. The thermostat is at least a degree warmer compared to when I got up this morning.

The space heater is electric, so certainly not the CO concerns of those that are fuel-based.

If we can't get the heat going today we'll be picking up another space heater. Not ideal to run at night, but if we're in the same room I'm not too concerned, especially with the newer models that have additional safety features. At least during the day we can have 2 running. Depending on night time temperatures we may consider sleeping in different rooms although I don't know how easily Chemguy would wake up if something malfunctions. Noises often wake me up that he sleeps through.

At least the open concept is good for keeping the rest of the house at temperatures where we don't have to worry about damage from the cold - with the current weather anyway.
 
We haven't had many problems with lack of heat. The furnace is gas. It seems that the closest heating shop is obliged to show up at any time day or night if the heat is off in the winter.
 
KayTheCurler said:
We haven't had many problems with lack of heat. The furnace is gas. It seems that the closest heating shop is obliged to show up at any time day or night if the heat is off in the winter.
Click to expand...
We could have called another company last night and paid for off-hours, but since we already had an appointment made for 7:30-9:30am and we aren't in a cold snap it didn't really seem to make sense to rush it more than that. Especially as they typically don't come ASAP, it's not unusual to wait 6 hours after calling. (ie. waiting now, it's been at least 5 hours since Chemguy called). Depending on the part/entirely new furnace, I'm not sure if we can get that done today.
 
Hope you get toasty again soon ChemGal! We have a service plan on our furnace & AC - it covers service calls & off hours/stat holidays are included - has proved itself to be worth it several times. Also includes annual maintenance check & tune up - so we find it useful.
 
Carolla said:
Hope you get toasty again soon ChemGal! We have a service plan on our furnace & AC - it covers service calls & off hours/stat holidays are included - has proved itself to be worth it several times. Also includes annual maintenance check & tune up - so we find it useful.
Click to expand...
I haven't heard of that, will look into it. Might not be worth it as Atco's free service is actually pretty good. Will have to price it out. The company we're currently using doesn't offer anything like that, and we have been happy with their service. They didn't get here until after their 'regular business hours' but as it was close he didn't charge us the evening rate.

We'll have a new furnace on Saturday, the installation teams are booked up all day tomorrow. They are providing us with additional space heaters until then. He was surprised at how warm we do have our house from the fireplace, he seemed to be wondering if our furnace really wasn't working at all when he first came in!
 
Less than two hours until I get my son back for three weeks(y). We have a family vacation and then he has a couple weeks at home. He heads back to Ottawa the weekend after New Year's. Christmas Dinner is at a cousin's place this year so we just have to bring our bean salad (requested by the cousin's wife). No other plans past that.
 
I did see that a while ago Mrs Anteater - and the reviews seemed to suggest it worked well! Haven't tried it ... yet!
 
Mrs.Anteater said:
Has anybody ever tried this hack of heating a room with four tea lights and two flower pots? To be found on Pinterest
DIY Flower Pot Heater | Emergency Heater | Homemade Heater- Budget101.com
Click to expand...
Haha I'm not even sure if I have any of that stuff. I don't own a cooling rack like that, any of our terracotta pots are way too big and I'm not even sure we have tea lights. We have a lighter :ROFLMAO:
I'm a bit less concerned about my comfort for today (although getting out of the shower in the am was unpleasant, after the gym it was fine as a few degrees made a big difference that way) as we do have a heated mattress pad, heated throw and electric heating pads. The extra space heaters will be nice for comfort's sake though since it's not just one day and early Sat morning is supposed to be quite cold, so freezing pipes or something would be more of a concern.

I did have a nap on the couch by the fire today which was nice, although I woke up too hot!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top