Loyal weblog readers will recall the episode earlier this year, detailed here, where I executed a not-so-smooth-or-seamless transition from an Automated Propane Delivery Program to a Call On Demand Program. That resulted in the infamous running-out-of-propane on the coldest weekend of the year debacle.
You might be interested to know that about a month after that, the downstairs gas package system gave up the ghost completely – I awoke one early Monday mid-March morning around 3:00 AM to the strong smell of propane. Contrary to Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, propane, unlike napalm, doesn’t smell like victory in the morning.
The last time I had the system checked a couple of years ago, the service technician went through this litany of everything wrong with it, closing with “I am not even sure if I replace any one of those parts that I will be able to get it back up and running again once I take it apart and put it back together”. Ouch.
So I had already internally reconciled that I would be replacing the system the next time it broke and that I was living on borrowed time – the unit is over 13 years old after all. The timing on all of this, though, was sort of ironic.
So lets summarize: Run out of propane. Buy 250 gallons of propane for the empty tank. Propane-based gas package system dies three weeks later. Natural gas lines were just installed in our development last summer. Need to buy new package system, ideally one that runs on natural gas (my preferred fuel source). Whither the 225 gallons of propane still in the tank? Sometimes you can’t make this stuff up.
A prudent approach would have been to replace the system in March, but I decided to rough it for a few more weeks without downstairs heat until Spring arrived and see if the cooling subsystem was still working. Much to my delight, it continued to work well through summer, so my procrastination was rewarded.
The last week or so I finally got around to scheduling a handful of dreaded “in house consultations” for bids on the replacement system. Good thing too since we had a pretty good cold snap this past week. In the preseason poll, the team to beat was the company that did the upstairs heat pump two years ago.
The whole experience went well back then. That system has performed fine (once I figured out the correct filter size) and I remember the HVAC inspector back in 2011 commented positively on the quality of the work he had seen from that particular company.
So preseason #1 came back to the house yesterday to give me their best shot. There were two salesman this time. Troy was a no-nonsense older guy about my age with the down-East North Carolina accent. He was accompanied by Michael, ex-Army, much younger, and really chatty – almost a little too smooth. Interesting dynamic there.
The original builder did a nice job with the initial system so it should be an easy installation. The existing duct work downstairs is in excellent condition and I have a nice dry crawlspace. The existing electrical circuits can be re-used for the new system.
Oh, and, in case you are wondering, it is simply a matter of replacing one orifice to convert newer systems from propane to natural gas. Natural gas operates at lower pressure than propane; hence a larger orifice to compensate for that difference. So I can burn that 225 gallons of propane and then convert to natural gas and get rid of that ugly 500 gallon tank. Plug-and-play. (I think it says something about my emotional maturity that I just chuckled when I wrote “larger orifice”.)
I had a number in mind for a mid-efficiency 13 SEER gas package system and Troy and Michael came in about 500 dollars under my number. But, Geez Louise, it is still a healthy chunk of cabbage.
While they were entering the information online for my contract and application, they needed my driver’s license so I whipped out my wallet and laid it on the table. (Excuse me while I whip this out.)
Astonished, Michael immediately remarked about the size of it, joking about whether I would be able to actually get it back into my pocket. No doubt, my wallet (shown below) is in need of some pruning and garbage collection, but it is not like it is in the class of George Costanza’s “filing cabinet under half of your ass”.
After Michael finished busting my chops, I was tempted to counter with: “If you think that wallet is large now, you should have seen it before you two got here about 90 minutes ago.”
