Fun with a floor furnace (Don't try this at home)

I have always thought that one should never expect anything from the weather. By its very nature, weather is ever-changing and unpredictable. Nevertheless, the recent cold and rain in Oklahoma City caught me by surprise. I wasn't thinking that I'd need to light my floor furnace for at least another month. Then I noticed that the temperature inside my house had started to drop to uncomfortable levels. Yesterday, it was 55 degrees inside. This morning, it was 50. Time to act.

Fortunately, last year when I bought my little house, I downloaded the manual for my floor furnace from the manufacturer's web site. So, after a delicious breakfast at the Red Cup, I got right to work.

First, I needed to clean the darned thing. This required me to get out my shop vac.

Then I had to put the cat away in the bedroom so she wouldn't get into the furnace when I opened it up to clean it. Next, I removed the register and the inner casing. Here's how it looked after the register was taken off, while the casing was still in place. I like this photo because you can see the controls over on the left, and how the whole thing fits together:

It took a while to vacuum out all of the accumulated dust, debris, and foreign objects. About two-thirds of the way through this process, I had to stop to clean out the vacuum. The hose seemed to be clogged with cat hair. Go figure. Once I finished with this step, I removed two of the vent covers from the house foundation so that the heater would be properly vented once it was lit. Then it was time to go under the house.

Here's what it looks like under the house as I crawled back toward the underside of the heater:

The chimney needs some repair, which you can tell when you crawl up closer to it. (I need to find a mason.) The furnace itself has a little bit of external rust, but it seems to be in good shape.

I inspected the furnace, all the fittings I could see, and the connections of the flue to the furnace and the chimney. I cleaned all the debris out of the debris pan. First I tried a little brush, and then a rag. Finally, I used some canned air, and that did the trick. You can barely see part of the debris pan in the photo above. Look for a little flat thing on the bottom middle of the furnace.

Here's where the flue enters the chimney:

This photo shows some of the other issues I need to resolve with the house. First, I need to dig (or, possibly, have someone dig) a French drain to keep water from dissolving the east wall and flowing under the house:

But I have a novel that I need to write in November, so that project may have to wait for spring.

I love to hang out under my house, but eventually it's time to get myself out from under.

And then it was time to go back indoors and light the furnace, following the instructions in the manual. At first I didn't see the part about holding down the gas control while I used the automatic spark switch, but it worked just fine with a match. Now my house is warm and cozy.

Some of that is due to the fact that my floor furnace is blazing away merrily, but I also had a lot of help from my friends in getting the house ready to move into. And when it's cold outside, having good friends keeps my heart warm.