We hit super low temps the past few days. It was in the single digits Wednesday and -10° when I woke up yesterday morning. We were up to 4° this morning! A great time for the heat to go out, right?! I was out all day Wednesday, but when I got home with the kids we noticed that it was really cold downstairs. We bundled up and when Alan came home he did some investigating and determined that the circulator pump on the boiler was broken. He put in a late-night call to the heating guys who were, fortunately, able to come over Thursday morning. They put in a new circulator pump, then discovered that we had frozen pipes! The pipes are behind all the sheetrock and insulation in the basement and the guys were hesitant to tear that apart, so Alan came home at lunchtime to figure it out. With the help of a space heater and my hair dryer (that we use for everything but hair drying!) he was able to thaw out the frozen part. Luckily it was just one area, right under the front door, where apparently the wood is rotting! That will be a fun project for the spring. The heating guys left when Alan got home, but came back again to check in (they were just across town at another job) and Alan had them take the circulator pump out, since everyone thought the problem was really frozen pipes.

I had told the kids that if it was still cold in the house when they got home from school we would have an upstairs afternoon. Alan got the pipes thawed just before they got home, but they were excited to find the house still cold :) We made a cracker snack and grabbed the Sorry game and had a fun afternoon upstairs while poor Alan worked in the basement. Then Alan relaxed on the couch for awhile, until I asked, “Shouldn’t the house be warming up by now?” Apparently the circulator pump was also broken! Alan took a drive over to the heating guys office, picked up the new installed-then-removed circulator pump and brought it back again and installed it himself. Now we have a new circulator pump (and an extra new one, just in case) and thawed pipes. The downstairs part of the house got to 54° before it started warming up again!

I really can’t complain about this problem as we still had heat upstairs and we were able to fix the problem within 24 hours. We also have a healthy supply of hot tea, longjohns, and sweaters to keep us warm. However, since this blog is part funny parenting stories, part my place to vent, part documentation of what goes on around here, and a BIG part of my memory, I wanted to get this in writing.

If one has to have frozen pipes and a broken heat on the coldest day of winter, I think this was the best possible scenario. :)

Baby it’s WARM inside now!