Boiler Boiler Toil and trouble? No, that doesn’t sound quite right.

When we built this house nearly 10 years ago, Ryan did a lot of the work himself. He wanted to install radiant floor heating, so he laid all the pipe in the concrete floors.

We talked about how someday we would buy a boiler and then hook up all this orange pipe and have warm floors. But boilers are expensive, and so we did not purchase one. I kept bugging Ryan about getting started on finishing that basement, and he said he wasn’t going to work on the basement when it was so cold down there, and I said let’s buy the dumb boiler, etc., etc.

Well, last winter we decided it was about darn time to buy the boiler. There was a healthy rebate offered, so we purchased the boiler. And there it sat, nice and cozy in it’s box. Other projects and Ryan’s heavy traveling schedule were always in the way.

At the end of summer, I had the furnace inspected, and they discovered a crack. They recommended that I have them fix it, or NOT run that furnace. Well, it was time to decide…are we going to get that boiler hooked up, or do we fix the furnace? (We did end up fixing the furnace, but called in the guys who originally installed it, so it wasn’t so expensive.)

Ryan and his brother-in-law have been working many long hours to get things hooked up in the basement. They’ve moved things around, unhooked the water heaters (which were leaking, by the way. It seems water heaters do NOT last more than 10 years. Many of our neighbors have recently experienced flooding due to water heaters leaking.), and there’s been lots of banging. Some nights I went to wash my face and found that we had no water. Or no hot water. There have been many mornings when I went to shower and was met by much sputtering and splashing and COLD water before the air in the line was forced out and the hot water finally came out. And the expense! I mistakenly thought that buying the boiler was it. I thought you just bought the boiler and “hook it up”. I forgot about all those many many orange pipes that have to go somewhere.

It’s been about a month of working and buying more and more parts, but on Sunday I went into my bathroom (the one with the coldest floors EVER) and I thought, “I must be crazy. The floor feels warm.” Could it be? Could it finally be working?

In the basement, it looks like this.

See all those orange pipes and that gorgeous manifold? Isn’t it pretty?

I’ve been walking around barefoot just enjoying the warmth on my feet. It’s not all evened out quite yet, so there are a lot of warm spots, and it feels wonderful. Of course, there are cold spots, too. Although yesterday my family room was 75 degrees and I had to open a couple of windows. Eventually it will all be regulated and hopefully won’t be getting too WARM, but it’s SO FANTASTIC!

Today there are forecasts of a huge blizzard that is hitting our area, but I keep thinking, “the weather outside is frightful, but our floors are so delightful”.

So, a big thank you to Chuck and Ryan, who have worked many long hours to get this thing set up. I’ll be enjoying my warm floors for many years to come. And if I get cold, I may just have to lay down on the wood floor to warm up.