The Happy, Happy Sound of a Roaring, Clinking Furnace

We awakened to a very chilly 55 degrees here at House of Sassafras. The furnace wasn't working. I did all the things that I could do: checked the thermostat, checked the circuit breaker, checked the pilot light. To my admittedly untrained eye, the pilot light seemed to be out. But the idea of me and fire and gas in the basement just seemed like a bad one. So I called the repairman. 3pm they said. Okay, I responded.

I spent the day at work idly imagining just what a weekend in my cold, cold house would feel like. While my students enjoyed the irony of me living without a furnace (much to their dismay, my classroom is always ice cold), I considered the horrors of a $5000 furnace repair bill. In short, I borrowed trouble and worried like only my mother's daughter can do.

The boy and I were home at 3 pm and the temperature in the house had sunk to 50 degrees. The cats were okay, but they have fur coats. And then, two minutes after our arrival home, our savior, in the form of a burly Jersey guy with a whole lot of tools arrived. He went to the basement and a few minutes later came upstairs with a twelve inch black cord in his hand. "Your thermocouple is burned out," he announced.

The thermocouple keeps the pilot lit light. No pilot light means no warm steam and no warm steam means a cold, cold house of sass. The repairman headed out to the van to get us a brand spanking new thermocouple.

Just a few minutes later, the new thermocouple was installed, the pilot light was lit and I can hear the sounds of my furnace thumping and roaring to life. The radiator pipes are clinking with steamy happiness. It's music to my ears.

Best of all is that a new thermocouple is bargain priced at $86. So we're back in business here at Sassafras House, planning on a warm and toasty evening.