Sunday, February 8th, 2026
Now this is what winter was like when I was a child—so cold it hurts! At 7 a.m., when I woke up today, the outdoor thermometer read -16°C, while the indoor thermometer was saying 68°F. Chilly on both counts. By 9 a.m., the outdoors had warmed to -14°C, while the indoors was down to 65°F and falling. Fudge. The heat was out.
The owner of the house is a mechanical engineer, which is very helpful. But he’s in Florida, which is not as helpful. I spent an hour on the phone with him debugging.1 After much jiggling of wires and gentle tapping with a tack hammer, we determined the water pressure regulator was on the fritz, causing a drop in water pressure, which prevented the fiery bits from kicking on. Not enough water to make fire, I guess.1 I took the regulator about halfway to pieces, made some manual adjustments, put it all back together, and voilà—fire! For now.
Barring catastrophe, we’re not getting an HVAC tech out here for days. Pretty sure not even a catastrophe would be enough on a frozen-over Super Bowl Sunday like today. I could fix it myself. It’s an easily accessible part that needs replacing. There’s no soldering, welding, natural gas, electrical, or anything obviously tricky involved in swapping out that component. However, the liability risk is more than I’m willing to take on.
I’m now sitting around the house babysitting the gizmo for fear it will fail again. It’s just as well. It’s bitterly cold outside. Still only -9°C. Meanwhile, we’re having a lovely 74°F in the dining room. (I’m running the place hot for a couple of days to maintain a little buffer. Just in case.)