IS IT WARM YET?

It's 7 a.m., and I'm sitting next to a roaring fire, my boxer at my feet. She's wearing her dog sweater. I'm wearing my wool hat. The temperature outside is -13. The temperature inside is 50 and holding. So far.

Last night when we came home from curling (we lost, don't ask the score), I could tell before I took off my coat that it was cold inside. Sixty-three, the normal sleeping temperature, but it was early for that. Cold air was blowing through the heating vents. We reset the furnace, it fired, and we went to bed. I woke up thinking I'd gone camping. Forty-nine degrees, and this time the reset didn't work.

Thirty years ago, when I first came to Alaska, we cooked and heated with the same oil stove, fed by fuel from an elevated fifty-five gallon drum. No one told us that fuel oil gelled at -40. It got cold inside. Very cold. At least there were no pipes to freeze, because we had no running water.

Now I'm monitoring the fire and two space heaters, one in the downstairs bathroom and one pointed at the water pipes in the garage, while waiting for a callback from a furnace repair person. We're planning to replace the furnace in the spring, taking advantage of the AHFC rebate. But evidently the old one needs some TLC to limp through till then.

Take-away points:

--have your furnace or boiler cleaned, tuned, and serviced annually
--have a contingency plan if the heat goes out: woodstove or fireplace (keep chimneys clean), space heaters (monitor carefully), close off parts of the house that don't have water pipes
--consider heat tape for pipes in parts of the house prone to freezing
--take heating and freeze-up potential into consideration before purchasing. Look closely at property disclosures for evidence of past problems. Talk with a reputable engineer about freeze-up potential and prevention tips.