Eric’s dream is to be warm. When we were dating, I said I wanted to live in Alaska. He said he wanted to live in Florida. I think most of our moves have been in his favor (seeing that we started in Michigan and have been -- mostly -- hovering right around the Mason-Dixon line). We haven’t made it to the land of summer-in-January, though, and this winter has been downright frigid. It doesn’t help that our house is old, with lovely, but single-glazed, windows. They are dripping with character, and on cold mornings, solid with frost on the inside panes.
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| Charming? Oh, yes. |
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| Double-glazed? Oh, no. Someone did just tell us that living with drafty windows keeps a person healthier, because the germs can get out. Maybe that's true; we haven't been sick once this winter. |
Also in keeping with the old East-coast charm of our home, the “boiler” (which is what they call the heater in these parts) runs on oil. Have you checked the price of oil lately? Especially when a person is heating all out-of-doors through those adorable bay windows. So we’ve been keeping the thermostats pretty low. Low like the tip of my nose is an icicle when I wake up, and the most painful moment of the day is when I throw the covers off and venture into the wintry air of our bedroom. We had a salesman over the other day to give us an estimate on replacement windows. He had one of those cool infra-red thermometer things that, when he pointed it at something, registered the temperature of that thing. The windows in our bedroom? 47 degrees. Fahrenheit.
All of this is not nearly so bad for me as for Eric. Remember, I’m the one who wants to live in Alaska. Our house is about as good a simulation of Alaska as a person can get in Maryland, so I should be happy. And as long as I have my fuzzy socks, I am, pretty much. Our house is nothing like Florida, however. That’s why, this winter, Eric bought himself a present: a pellet stove.
For those who are not familiar with this brand of heating apparatus, a pellet stove is a closed-in fireplace that burns little wood pellets. Ours can apparently also burn corn husks and pinecones, which earned us a tax credit for being environmentally friendly. Pellet Stove Mike, who will return to this story shortly, counsels against burning such alternative fuel, however. He counsels against, in fact, all fuels except for the most expensive premium pellets available (the darker in color, the better, he says). At some outlets, though, just saying that you know Pellet Stove Mike will get you a substantial discount on pellets, so it’s worth listening to his advice. In general, I have experienced the pellet stove as a good thing. It is attractive, cozy, cleaner than a wood stove, and has probably saved us at least $1,000 on heating oil. But, like any other appliance, the stove has brought with it its own batch of issues. Mostly two.
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| Who wouldn't want to curl up next to one of these? |
The first issue is the pellets. This is really not such a big deal. In most winters, anyway, it would not be not such a big deal. Up until about February, we (meaning Eric and Lucas, usually), just had to make a trip to Lowe’s to restock on 40-pound bags of pellets every few weeks. Father-son bonding, weightlifting, no problem. As the Winter of the Snowpacolypse wore on, however, we encountered problems. First, Lowe’s ran out of the good pellets, and was receiving deliveries only of pellets that looked like white sawdust. They were still called “premium,” and the price did not change, but the quality (along with the heat output) was wildly reduced. Then Lowe’s ran out of even the crummy pellets. So Pellet Stove Mike sent me to 84 Lumber, where I bought pellets at the Mike discount. Two weeks later, that store was out. Farm and Home had some, Mike said, so I drove to Sykesville (which is a really cute town, for any Marylanders out there who want to take a drive some nice day). Farm and Home was rationing -- the long, cold winter had severely depleted their stash as well -- but they sold me 10 bags of pellets. That brings us to today. We poured in the last bag of pellets last night, and Farm and Home said maybe they’ll get some pellets in this week. Maybe. They put me on their list of people to call, which I am picturing as looking a little like Santa’s “nice” list. Right now, it’s 60 degrees outside, but Thursday is supposed to be 23. The stove sits, cold and black.
The second issue with the stove is that it is a machine, and not an entirely simple one. Its hopper and pellet distribution system mean we only need to fill it twice a day. Its agitator means we only have to clean out the ash once a week. Those moving parts, however, mean that the pellet stove is much more likely than a wood stove to experience technical difficulties. Of course, all pellet stove salespeople will swear that these difficulties are extraordinarily rare, that you can close the door of your pellet stove, not open it for a year, and it will burn just fine. We, of course, are the exception to this unbreakable rule. Which is why Pellet Stove Mike has been a visitor at our house several times this winter. Now, I like Mike. He reminds me of my dad’s Indiana country friends. He reads Chuck Colson books, listens to classical music on the radio, wears a John Deere cap, and grumbles about the government. I don’t, however, really want him to come over quite as often as our touchy stove seems to require. I don’t think he really wants to make the 45-minute drive, either, but he is the sales and service department at his stove business (as well as management), so he doesn’t have much choice. The only thing that would keep him from coming to fix a problem with the stove is if the problem was something he couldn’t fix. Which is what happened this week. So tomorrow I get to meet Pellet Stove Randy, who apparently does nothing all day but fix pellet stoves. You know, the ones that never break.
