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Yeah I lived without heat for two separate winters but it never really gets below twenty in Atlanta so while uncomfortable space heaters made up for it.

I know the feeling. My furnace busted at the start of this winter. 5 days of the house in the lower 50's. Fuck that.

I'm sure that must be pretty damn miserable. Personally, I'd much rather have the heat die during the wintertime than have the A.C. die during the summertime, but we reside in totally different climate zones.

made it through the night. only dipped to 49-50 degrees in here.
not bad.... eating some oatmeal, drinking some coffee, sitting next to the oven. feel like a prospector or something...

gotta say, this is far better than when we didn't have a/c during august/september...

My heat died at the start of this heating season, too. Last year, the same thing happened only for the service tech to come out and show me how to install a $5 thermocouple to keep the pilot light from going out.

So, the same thing happens this year. Noticing the pilot light is out yet again, I dutifully run to Home Depot, get a thermocouple, install it, and light the pilot light. Turning the thermostat on, my sense of accomplishment swelled as the burner fired up in a blaze of blue glory.

But that was short-lived. After the furnace cycled off and on again, I heard the gas go on, saw the pilot light was still on, but no big blue flame, so I got the hell out of there just in time... KABOOM!!! Then the safety switch kicks in and the pilot light goes out. I have no clue what the fuck is going on, but at least my new thermocouple did its job...

So I file another home warranty claim and the service tech comes out, duplicates the KABOOM!!!, and tells me that the heat exchanger to my 1980-vintage furnace is rotted out, and that I need a whole new furnace.

My warranty covers a new furnace. It *doesn't*, however, cover the reducting needed to bring it to code. The tech swears up and down he needs an extra man to do the job (also a non-covered charge coming out of my pocket), which is bullshit since he could barely fit in the furnace room himself. So, after three weeks of a three-way argument between me, the warranty company, and the service tech, $900 later I finally lose out and the service tech replaces the furnace. With the extra man. Who doesn't do shit except carry parts to/from the van.

Meanwhile, I'm without heat for four weeks. I'm out of town Thanksgiving week, and another week is balmy. The other two weeks, however, are spent finding out how many space heaters it takes to trip various circuit breakers, going through all my firewood, and keeping the stove on half the time. At least my gas bill came in under $30 that month.

it was a cozy 12 degress outside when i woke up this morning. the place i'm living now has heat, which is nice. i had no heat last winter. it wasn't all that bad of a winter, but there were a couple frigid weeks with no heat which sucked pretty bad.

hench wrote:made it through the night. only dipped to 49-50 degrees in here.
not bad.... eating some oatmeal, drinking some coffee, sitting next to the oven. feel like a prospector or something...

yeah, my heater is acting weird right now so i haven't been running it at night. the lowest it's gotten is 48. it sucks when you first get up, but it's really not that bad once i get 3 layers of clothes on.

my landlord came by yesterday and told me he's getting someone to come by and inspect it. "don't want it to be cold for ya when the winter comes". yyyyeah, sometimes i wonder about midwesterners..

One trick that works is putting a brick or cinderblock on a stove burner and cooking it for an hour or so.

My place has heat... barely.

The living area is decently heated but the front bedroom attached to it is a tit bit nipply and the back of the apartment--the kitchen, bathroom and back bedroom--are usually fookin' freeezing.

I got one of those oil-filled radiator heaters for the back bedroom and that works pretty well, but the kitchen and bath are still quite chill. I'm reluctant to put an electric heater of any kind in the bathroom though, so in the mornings I just run the shower real hot for a few minutes before I get in there.

Sometimes I turn the oven up to like 450° and leave the door open to warm up the kitchen.

Electric blankets are the best. I got one for Christmas and I've gotten far more use out of it than any of my other presents so far. Though it does make getting out of bed in the morning a lot more difficult.