"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." (Albert Einstein)Mom has been complaining for months about her furnace, how it doesn't heat the house and she is always cold, how she has to have a fire going in her woodstove to supplement the furnace, etc. etc. She had a furnace guy come out and check it out (twice), but he didn't find anything wrong. There was speculation that the furnace might not be capable of heating the place, or maybe the problem was that the furnace ducts are in the unheated crawlspace, or maybe the problem was that the place is not insulated, or maybe it was that there are so many windows and they need warmer drapes. Then there was a lot of (futile) effort to convince her to have the woodstove replaced with a propane stove because everybody hated the thought of mom shivering in her house.
Well today she told me that even though she didn't have enough energy to build a fire in the woodstove, she had finally been able to get it warm enough in her house. Guess how she did it??? SHE TURNED UP THE THERMOSTAT!!! Oh my gosh, all this time it had never occurred to me to ask her what the thermostat was set at. Apparently she has been setting it at 72, and thinking that should make the house the "right" temperature (completely ignoring the fact that she much prefers her house to be at least 85). So today she decided to throw caution to the wind and turn up the thermostat to (gasp!) 78 degrees!! And finally she is warm enough! She said, "It is soooo nice and warm in here!"
I can't believe that it never occurred to me to ask the simplest and most obvious question.
No comments:
Post a Comment