Grapes and Trenches

Fall has arrived abruptly after an intensely hot summer. One day we were sweltering in cotton dresses and shorts, the next I was searching my still-packed boxes for a sweater. With the change of seasons came the need to finally replace our 35 year old furnace. Here is what a 35 year old furnace looks like:

This one was 120,000 btu's, overload for our square footage, and running at roughly 50% efficiency. We looked into geothermal as an alternative to a natural gas furnace, but the cost is much too prohibitive for us at this time. Maybe, like CD players or VHS, both of which started out costing a fortune, geothermal heating will decrease in price as demand rises. Until that time, we opted for a high efficiency furnace at the appropriate btu's for a house the size of ours. We had our new furnace installed for a very good price, but on the condition that we did some manual labour to offset the labour costs. No problem!

This is what we were left with to complete the trench we were asked to dig in order to install the drain line:

It's a big ol' chip hammer. Lets just say with my newly acquired pipes accustomed to hauling a 20 pound child around all day, even I had a hard time holding it up. So the duty fell to D, who managed to dig this in about two hours:

He did an admirable job, not even tearing up the adjoining tiles. So now we have a 2" deep trench in our basement running from the furnace to the drain pipe, which the HVAC installer will be fitting today (he's on his way as I type).

Meanwhile, the furnace is in, and the installer is also putting in a coil so that once we can afford to install AC, it will be a simple enough process. He will also be removing this thing today - a humidifier - that was attached to the old furnace and had probably never been cleaned in the 35 years since it was installed, as can be noted by the wretched stalagmites of pure poison inside:

It looks even grosser in person. The furnace itself is a Goodman, and I admit, as far as furnaces go, its a beaut! I like the retro industrial look:

Happily, we've got a pretty efficient unit at 85,000 btu's at 92.1% efficiency:

This will do nicely for our house and budget, and once we buy a programmable thermostat, we can save even more energy by making sure the house is set to cooler in the nights and daytimes without having to remember ourselves to lower the temperature twice a day.

Also with the change of season comes the harvesting of our grapes! This is a whole other endeavour, making wine, for a blog in itself. Lets just say for now that our efforts harvesting the red grapes:

went south in a heartbeat with a teaspoon of sulfites. Now we've got the white grapes on the go, and we're on the second racking. Just like the house, it's a trial and error sort of thing, and we're learning from the mistakes we make. Lets hope our future mistakes on the house, like the grapes, will be in teaspoons and not in gallons.