The Pellet Stove Drama of ‘09… Storm! Snow! Cold House! AAAAAAgh!!!
We’ve had out pellet stove as the bulk of our home heating for 5 years now, and we’ve loved it and had no problems with it… til this year. It just wasn’t working well at the end of the season (in June- seriously!) so we knew we’d have to give it some attention this fall. I lost track of how many times Dave pulled out this cast-iron monstrocity and after an hour of having his head in the depths of the thing pulled his head out in victory announcing he had found a new nook or cranny to clean and it must work now! Only to be back at square one… back to the drawing board! After two days of this valiant/herculean effort, he determined that professional help was unavoidable. (deep sigh) We have great guy we use, but he (big shock) was booked solid for another three weeks. And on another front, we had only a bag or three of pellets left. The “great deal” we got in the summer was not being delivered and we kept getting obscure reports of debunked trucking contracts and the like. We were waking up at night trying to imagine what to do now that our 5 tons of pellets and entire heating budget might be as gone as the assurance of global warming. Dave waffled between a back-alley confrontation and contacting the law offices of Boy, Didtheytakeus and Howe. I thought maybe I’d just get a job. I suppose the money could be used to buy for-real pellets, but more importantly, I could mooch off an employer’s heat for the season. Thank goodness- happy ending- our fabulous stove guy ended up forfeiting his evening to brave our first snow and replace the part we needed. And we got a call this morning that the pellets are in Iowa and speeding toward Rib Lake at 65mph. Phew! That was a close brush for me! I guess I can lay aside the psuedo-resume and I’m hoping to be able to shed a few layers by this evening… And lest the pictures fail to paint the near-tragic picture I paint, we have had three snows, one of which accumulating 3 inches… yeah.