Quick to Blame ... Slow to Learn

I went downstairs to say good-night to My Youngest last night and the room was silent. Absolutely silent. This was the first time in forever that the furnace wasn't running.

My Second Son turned the furnace fan from 'on' to 'auto' last week. Throughout the time the fan has been on 'auto', I have yet to notice the furnace turn off. In fact, I have been cooler than I was before this adjustment (probably due to the fact that my son also rearranged the upstairs registers to direct the heat downward so that they don't freeze downstairs this year).

Long story short ... the furnace runs. All of the time. It has since we got it (and we ran the fan on the one we had before as well).

So when the furnace was eerily silent last night, the first thought that crossed my mind is that our furnace cleaning had resulted in a broken furnace. And so the story goes ...

I woke up to a warm room this morning. It's never warm in my room. As if my brain turned on as a result of a good night's sleep and a warm room I thought, "The furnace cleaning actually fixed the furnace!!" Finally. A positive result from our maintenance binge. I was elated.

I marvelled at the warmth within the house this morning. Then as I sat down to write this post, I was aware of a cool breeze from the register beside me. Sure enough. Air was circulating when the furnace wasn't blowing heat. After it stopped last night and this morning. What happened???

Then it came to me.

I noticed that our windows were starting to accumulate moisture at the bottom of them this morning. Last night, I checked our air exchanger to look for evidence of it being cleaned yesterday. I closed it up but I didn't check to see if it turned back on afterwards.

When I finally remembered to go and check to see if the air exchanger was running, I was not surprised to find out that it didn't automatically turn itself on after I opened it up last night. So I turned it up to its maximum efficiency and went about my day.

It wasn't until I sat still that I felt the cool air circulating. It wasn't until I started writing, that I realized that the furnace cleaning had absolutely nothing to do with the furnace running. It is completely and totally related to the air exchanger and it overrides the 'automatic' switch on our thermostat.

I was so quick to believe that nothing good could come from the furnace cleaning. I was ready to (first) blame them. Then I was ready to give them all the credit. Now I see what I (suppose that I) should have known all along.

Now the dilemma. Warm house and moisture on the windows? Or cool house and dry windows? At least we know that we have a choice in the matter now. The mystery of the cold rooms has been solved at last.

I must now go solve the next mystery of how to get the VCR to work now that the digital cable box is hooked up. I'm on a roll ...