It’s minus three here…but I’m looking out my window at the woods, and there isn’t a speck of wind…which is a good thing. I’ll need to bundle up anyway when it’s time to leave here at 9:45.
Brrr.
@rosered55 Hope you get your heat back soon. I didn’t shut the water off last night to see if they survive. Hot water line barely survived at 3 degrees and cold line was somewhat frozen. I got it thawed in 30 minutes. Now I know 3 degrees is the threshold.
I just flipped the circuit breaker and it seems as though the furnace came back on. It definitely was off before; no sound, and the thermostat was giving me a warning. But I might be back on safe ground; I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I have places to take refuge but most won’t take my dog!
Good news @rosered55, I hope the HVAC guy is still coming. I read somewhere to take the filter out of your furnace which will allow the furnace to not have to work so hard (the filter restricts airflow in addition to filtering). Good luck, stay warm. Our furnace is running, but not keeping up, but there’s only another 24 hours or so to go…
There was a fire. Coupled with the extreme temps, there really is a shortage that risks depleting the supply entirely.
Plants and other companies have closed down for the day to preserve gas.
@rosered55 SAME thing happened to my son, new home owner. Called me last night almost midnight that the furnace seemed to have stopped running and the temp was down to 64 in the house. He ended up flipping a switch and it started back up. He came over with the dog to sleep at our house anyway (he lives 5 mins away). I went over with him to the house this morning - the house was still cold - like 58 but the furnace was running. He called a couple of companies this morning anyway and they said they won’t come out if it’s running (probably triaging??) but that it also with the temp at -10 might just take some time to catch up. Crossing fingers for him - and you!!
Yes, take out your air filter. The unit just got overpowered per se and flipped your breaker. Once the cold starts to reverse you will see your warm air return
I am going to respectfully disagree with you romani.
What I want to know is did Consumers close all of its nonessential sites to conserve energy? Since the fire was out at 3 pm why did they wait until after 10:30 to send out an amber alert of all things? There are many other ways to alert customers to conserve energy than an amber alert when many people were asleep.
I have DTE Gas and supposedly do not have to conserve gas but still received the amber alert.
CMS Energy can do whatever they want, I am annoyed how they did it.
They have lots of underground storage tanks that they fill with natural gas in the summer when gas is much cheaper. They have gas, they can fill those tanks, it will cost them.
There are outages all the time which the public never hears about, they don’t send out amber alerts.
Is Consumers going to reimburse people who’s pipes burst because they turned down their heat? I would think not.
Can people tell I’m annoyed?
Our furnace is working but we are down to 62 in the house. Thankfully we’ve hit the worst of it so I’m hoping it will slowly start to warm up as the outdoor temps increase. Thankfully no burst or frozen pipes.
Thankfully my D is now on the ground in Charlotte after early morning flight out of Hartford. She had to drive there pre- dawn but she made it. Looks like flights were going out except for ones to Chicago and Ontario and maybe a few others but points south looked good
Yes, can’t wait until it starts warming up a bit! It started yesterday, I now have to blow dry the slider door bc it ices shut, just so the poor dog can go out. We bundle him up in his wardrobe, lol, Halloween T-shirt, 2 Christmas sweaters and his coat. Normally, he gets annoyed when we put on one of his “outfits” but not now. He seems to sense it’s a necessary evil. Now, I just need to get him some of that Mushers Secret, that I think it was @momofsenior1 mentioned, for his paws. We’ll be ready for the next Polar Vortex.
Hope everybody’s furnace can hang in there to get through today.
Was so sorry to hear about the U of Iowa student, so sad.
-22 outside in Chicagoland when I woke this morning. It’s supposed to warm up to about zero degrees and then 40s this weekend.
I cannot wait!
Our drafty old house is hanging in there. No system malfunctions yet! Knock on wood!
At Ohare and my plane is here waiting… Can’t wait for North Carolina BBQ or something like that. I see there are a good amount of Detroiters… At least you have good delis, bagels and coney island hot dogs. Chicago is great but every time I go back to visit family those are my essentials… Oh yeah and custard on Woodward!
I’m sure I’m not the only parent of a kid whose off-campus housing is way below 64 degrees. He’s barricaded in his bedroom, the warmest room, with a shirt stuffed under the bedroom door to block drafts. One more day 'til it warms up. But hey, he has Internet.
I’m not even in the middle of the polar vortex - it’s 12 degrees in my mid-Atlantic neighborhood. However, my neighborhood has no gas lines so we have heat pumps for our heat. Unfortunately they are terribly inefficient when temps go below freezing at which point the system switches over to electric heat. This is super expensive and runs constantly to try to maintain heat. Even before temps got this low this winter, my heat pump could not keep up with the cold and I’ve been coming downstairs in the morning with the thermostat set for 65 and the inside temp reading 61 degrees. I end up having to turn down the thermostat to no more than one degree above the indoor temp so that the system is not constantly running.
My only saving grace is that we have two systems, one added later when we put a two story addition on the back of our house. At the time we couldn’t afford to redo the duct work to allow for first floor to be on one unit and second floor on the other, so instead, our addition (master bedroom and family room) has heat/AC from the new unit. We did run duct work through the attic so the newer unit has vents to the three other bedrooms upstairs so basically only the original first floor is still only on the original unit. The newer unit for some reason works better, thankfully, so as long as I hang out in the family room when it’s freezing out, I’m not cold. I was working in my office, in the original part of the first floor, earlier this morning and my hands were like ice.
BREAKING NEWS: We are no longer in negative numbers!!! (Northern Ohio) 2 degrees and sunny!
Best of all, S’s furnace seems to be catching up and working. That is the icing on the cake.
I’m so glad we have two new furnaces for this weather. A few years ago, one furnace went out in April so we just put off replacing it (lots of $$ we didn’t have) and when we did fix it, the other furnace went out at the end of that season. So both are less than 2 years old. They were able to maintain their temperature settings this week within one degree at the worst (outdoor temp -22). Super thankful for this comfort, and for having my mom live with us so I don’t have to worry about her somewhere else.
It’s 37 in North Carolina and it feels cold… Haha… But tomorrow close to 60… Thank goodness!!
It was down to 64 F in our house this morning. We bought this house because of its large windows, which means that there is a lot of light. However, it also means that a lot of heat is lost through radiation, especially when temps are as low as they were.
On the topic, my kid complained that her room was pretty cold. So I checked to see in the windows needed some sealing, and discovered, when I opened the shutters over her bed, that she had neglected to close the storm windows. This, of course, explained the fact that there was ice on the inside of the window…
It is now a balmy -2 F outside, so things are getting a bit better, and by this time tomorrow it will be a positively tropical 20 F. It’s expected to get up to 52 F on Monday, so people are being warned of the dangers of heatstroke.
We are up to -2 in NE IL and the interior house is back up to 66. Whooo hoooo! Even the dog went out twice without complaint or incident.