And then there were none…

…warm floors in our house, that is.  Recently, I wrote about our lack of upstairs heat.  Well, just in time for the first mid-20 degree nights of the season, the circulator pump for the downstairs heat decided to go belly-up on us.  The good news is that I was home to hear it and shut the boiler down before any major damage was done.  The bad news is that the warranty company is really outdoing themselves with this claim.  First, they called accusing us of trying to have them come fix the upstairs heat, which they’d already refused to fix earlier.  Now, they claim that nobody in our service area can work on a boiler.  Never mind that they sent somebody out to work on our boiler a few weeks ago.  The company has made it our responsibility to find a contractor and have them “pre-authorized” by their agents.  Then, they’ll consider reimbursing us for the fix, assuming it isn’t excluded in their shifty, fine print contract, the same one with the smiling HVAC technician replacing a family’s broken-down A/C system on the cover.  Anybody want to make a bet on how this will go?

American Home Shield’s business is a sham.  They prey on nervous new homeowners who hope to protect their wallets from further damage.  They make any and every effort to deny claims, knowing full well that their business model doesn’t add up if they don’t.   Their practices are deceitful, unfair and just plain wrong.  I’d gladly take my money back in place of this headache.

Fortunately, I had the perfect stay-warm activity lined up for the holiday weekend: raking the yard.  It took three partial days to finish and clearly hadn’t been done for many years.  My shoulders and neck are reluctant to forgive me, but the lawn looks good.

Without any yard work to be done during these early dark evenings, it gets a bit chilly.  We bought space heaters, but they’re outmatched by our tall ceilings and drafty windows.  I’m sure that someday we’ll regale our kids with stories of survival from our first winter in the house.  But for the moment, our funny bones are frozen.

Mostly.