Memorial Box Monday: the furnace

You may question why the photo above is blog-worthy...  It's because it goes with a story I wanted to share from last week.

The reason this post is called "Memorial Box Monday" is in honor of A Place Called Simplicity, a blog I've read for over three years.  Linny has a practice of sharing stories of God's faithfulness and provision for their family and encourages her friends to designate a place (like a decorative cabinet or box) to store reminders or mementos of these occasions (much like the children of Israel would build stone memorials to remind them of God's work on their behalf).  I have admired that practice and 'intended' to do the same for our family, but you know how life goes...

Last week we had something happen which I don't want to forget, so forgive me, Linny if you ever read this, for recording the account here and not quite following through with a true "memorial box" as you encourage!

We've known for quite some time that the student center furnace was in need of replacement, but given the expenses of maintaining the building, we held out as long as we could.  Nevertheless, we had been in touch with the buildings and maintenance person at our mission and he graciously contacted some wonderful volunteers in Pennsylvania who agreed to travel to Kentucky over our spring break (next week) to install a furnace for us with their labor and travel donated to us!  Isn't that generous?

Thankfully it has been a mild winter and our furnace hasn't been used that strenuously, but Thursday night the temperatures dipped and the thermostat kicked the unit on.

An important detail to insert into this account is that the student center and director's apartment, while under one roof, are heated by two different systems.  The basement storeroom-turned-home-office (next to our garage, under our apartment) is the only room in our private dwellings that is heated by the center's furnace.  Our apartment heat system was replaced about three years ago by a heat pump.

It was about 10PM on Thursday and the kids were in bed.  I found myself down in the home office, working on my computer when I noticed an odd smell.  It reminded me of the smell of natural gas, like what I smell when we cook over gas burners at the apartment in Albania.  Nathan joined me a few minutes later, but didn't smell it.  A few minutes later it seemed much stronger, so I decided to go to the furnace room to investigate.  When I opened the door, the smell was over powering.

I called Nathan in and he agreed that it was unusually strong and realizing he ws developing a headache, decided to call the gas company.  After doing so, he checked the carbon monoxide detector in the furnace room, but it hadn't gone off.

About 30 minutes later someone from the gas company arrived.  Nathan met him in the parking lot and  apologized for bothering him so late on a week night.  Nathan told me that as soon as they walked in the door of the building, the gentleman's carbon monoxide detector started beeping like crazy.

Apparently, at 10 parts per million (ppm) the gas man is required to turn off the furnace and prohibit further use.  20ppm is considered dangerously high levels.  His reader in our entryway was 19ppm!

He went downstairs and turned off the unit while we opened up doors to air out the building.

While our family was probably not in danger of going to sleep having that air pumped in through our duct work, we did have guests sleeping in a student center guestroom that had that air blowing into it.  Thankfully, they had been out and about and were not in the building when the gas started seeping and didn't return until after we had shut down the furnace.

I'm not really sure what was going on with the furnace technically, but I know that God truly protected us and our guests that evening.  Had I not been in the ONLY room in our home where I could have smelled the gas, had it not started before we had gone to sleep, I can only imagine what might have happened to our guests, or even us!  It would have been tragic.

We later learned (and I can pass this on to you) that the furnace room is NOT the place to install your carbon monoxide detector.  The reason is, your furnace is sucking air FROM that room and blowing it throughout the house.  It's better instead to install it near a duct.

So now we are praising God for his protection! And we are also thankful to whomever designed this student center for including THREE wood stove inserts like the one above!  Since Friday's storms, the temperatures have dropped yet we have been able to keep the building a comfortable temperature thanks to wood heat!

The lazy man's fire-starter.  Seriously, they make the job SO much easier!
For quite some time we've been collecting firewood from all the trees around the property and thankfully have a good supply to get us through until the new furnace is installed!