“Are those termite holes?” Gary looked concerned, given that the massive beam in
question was clearly instrumental in supporting the floor above us.
“Yeah,” I replied, reaching up to break off a jagged piece
of the hole-peppered wood to demonstrate just how brittle that section of beam
was.
“Whoa. Can’t be good,” Gary said, unnerved.
I relented in my cruel little game and explained, “When my
husband Dave and I bought this house, the building inspector told us he could
drive a key into this beam and still find more solid wood at its core than in a
house newly-built.” My companion
nodded, relieved, and brushed aside a swag of cobweb as he turned to inspect
the hot water heater.
For that was our purpose in the basement. The furnace and hot water heater – one,
a cast-iron behemoth hulking in the deep shadows, the other a massive beige
cylinder – are old. Not as ancient
as our 1782 house, but they’ve done their time. They have squatted below for twenty-four years, thrumming
audibly to life to keep us warm as long as we've been here. The furnace is checked and cleaned
annually and in recent years I’ve been told, “She’s good for maybe three more
years. ’Course, could go in a year.
Hard to say.” Love that
uncertainty.
So, Dave and I decided to be pro-active rather than wait for
a furnace blow-back to darken our walls and furniture with soot (as had
happened to the prior owner), or a water heater leak to spew rivers across the
basement floor. The furnace will
be replaced later, once the weather warms up. “Let’s wait just in case there’s
a glitch,” Dave said. “It’d be
just our luck the new one would fail during a cold spell.”
So the furnace is on hold, but I called the utility company
to request a visit regarding the hot water heater. I was told it was not their policy to come out unless there
was a leak. She said ours was an 80-gallon unit installed in 2003.
“Mm, don’t think so,” I said. “It was here in 1990 when we moved in, and it is definitely
a 120 gallon unit.”
“That’s not what our records indicate.” The woman was pleasant, but firm. And wrong.
I’m not sure why I thought to mention it to her, but our
cats had shredded the heater’s insulation wrapper and the tall beige cylinder
stood nearly naked, strips of pink fiberglass batting hanging from her sides
like rags on a beggar.
“Oh! Well! That’s a problem, isn’t it? We’ll send
someone out to take a look!”
Chipper, agreeable, helpful.
Within two days, I got a call, and Gary was at the door.
I liked him immediately. He was tall and wiry with close-cropped curly hair and
glasses, a New Englander who would have been right at home in a town meeting in
the eighteenth century. And a man
who admired a stalwart unit such as the one in our basement. He directed his flashlight at a metal
plate on the back of the heater and guffawed. “Look at this! This number indicates the year it was manufactured
– 1966! This girl’s almost fifty years old!” He chuckled to himself in noting the information on his
clipboard; the information I’d been given over the phone. “2003. Right.”
I gave him my spiel about being pro-active in seeking to
replace the unit, but added, “It’s served us well. We’ve always had as much hot water as we needed.”
“They built ‘em
to last back then,” Gary said.
“Don’t count on fifty years with the new one, but this is a disaster
waiting to happen. We’ve got to get it out immediately.”
I felt foolishly smug that I’d been right in forcing this
visit, but also, a little sad.
Seriously? Over a metal
cylinder? Yes. I am prone to personification and
somehow, these two warm-hearted monoliths in our basement seemed like old soldiers,
guardians who had served us faithfully all these years. And they don’t make ‘em like they used to. Was it a mistake to cast them aside
even as they hummed away, doing their jobs as they always had?
Not according to Gary.
Evaluation complete, we climbed the basement stairs and stopped in the
kitchen while Gary leaned on the counter to fill out the paperwork. He passed on the coffee I offered, but
we chatted a bit about the forecast for another snowstorm, some property he
owns in Vermont, and my mother’s 1938 Roper stove. He shook his head at the date. “She getting’ rid of it?” he asked.
“No way. A
couple of burners don’t work, but she’s still got three good ones and a double
oven.”
“There it is again,” he said. “Don’t make ‘em like they used to.” He instructed me to call his
office and make an appointment for the replacement, and we shook hands as he
took his leave. For some reason, I
had to restrain an impulse to give him a hug.
In the days preceding removal, Dave cleared away planks of
wood, paint cans, and cases of bottled water to create a path through the
basement to the bulkhead. In a flurry of disrespect for our resident spiders, I
swept free cobwebs festooning the ceiling beams. And on January 28, I stood in
the basement, part of a semi-circular assembly around our heater, with five
burly men, each almost interchangeable with the others in dark blue uniforms,
woolen caps pulled low over brows, and scarves muffling chins.
“You got termites?’’ A scarf-muted voice asked. (Must have spotted the beam.)
“Once upon a time,” I filled him in.
Was I imagining it, or was there an air of reverence as the
men considered the venerable cylinder before them? One, obviously a soul sensitive to my mixed feelings, pried
off the metal plate embossed with the unit’s vital statistics – brand, model,
and serial numbers – and gave it to me before the men set to work.
I was intrigued that the new unit was hauled in first and
tipped upright next to its elderly counterpart, an odd sequence as it reduced
maneuver room even more. In truth,
maybe I was nettled on behalf of the 1966 model at having this shiny white
upstart thrust so suddenly into its space.
With canvas straps guiding and much grunting and bracing of
shoulders, the old heater was lowered onto a red hand-truck. Slowly, the men navigated the cylinder
around the base of the chimney and lolly columns, under the stairs, past the
washer-drier, and through a 29” door that barely permitted passage of the 29”
unit. Down a step the procession
continued, into Dave’s music room, where guitars and empty glass wine casks
lined the wall like spectators on a boulevard witnessing this final passage.
And then, a challenge: how to get past our black submarine
of an oil tank wedged at the bottom of the bulkhead stairs? As one, the men stood straight, rubbed
lower backs and hands, then leaned in to ease the unit past the tank and angle
it up and out…into fresh air, across the snowy lawn, onto a lift to the truck,
and like an era passing, away…
P.S. Within
nine days, the new unit failed twice. Yes. Twice.
Somewhere out there the old 1966 model is smirking. They don’t make ‘em
like they used to.
P.P.S. At the
time of posting this blog, the new furnace has been installed. It, too, failed within a day. *sigh*
