As easy as that?

Something, whatever it was, woke me early this morning. It could have been the cold. My face must have felt something. I went downstairs and checked the thermostat. The furnace was not kicking on. It was about five in the morning and about five degrees outside. The indoor temperature was under fifty degrees.

I grabbed the flashlight and headed to the basement, remembering what the repairman did last year when he essentially cleaned out a rubber hose and charged me $150 to do so.

Found the hose, detached it, cleaned it out, replaced it. Tightly. Turned the breaker back on.



It took about four hours to get the house warmed up again, but the furnace is functioning. A hotel room was not reserved. The pipes did not freeze and no repairman was called in the early hours of the coldest morning of the year.