More Woe is Me

Sent early 2001 or late 2000.

This is me. Another “Woe is me” story came to mind the other day. It was a dark and stormy night. Well, actually, it was broad daylight, but I have always liked the sound of ‘it was a dark and stormy night’. But I digress.

I was called to a mobile home because the furnace would not work. I relit the pilot and all seemed well. I then turned on the main burner, and again, all seemed well. Just as I was beginning to think that; (1) The homeowner was nuts, or (2) I was at the wrong location. That has happened before, but that’s another story.

I then noticed that the main burner flame had gone out, and I thought, huh? I must now pause and explain that this mobile home had just had a new roof put on, and in doing so the vent had been removed from the furnace. This type of furnace has one vent pipe inside the other. The inner pipe is for the exhaust to be vented to the outside, and the other pipe is for fresh air for combustion to be brought in to the combustion chamber. The roofers did not attach the inside pipe. This caused the exhaust to recirculate back into the furnace. Now, who can tell me why this was a problem? Very good! You may stay after class and clean the erasers. Yes, there is no oxygen in the exhaust, which caused the flame to go out.

When I opened the access door to lite the pilot, this of course let oxygen into the furnace. I then reached into the furnace and hit the trigger on the hand held igniter. What happened next was somewhat interesting. A rather loud boom was heard. This was followed by some of the prettiest blue flame roaring out of the access door of the furnace. This flame did several things. It melted the nylon cuff of my shirt to my wrist, while setting fire to my shirt sleeve. The rest of the flame bounced off the hallway wall behind me. I had just put the fire out on my shirt, when I heard the lady of the house say in a rather timid voice, “Is every thing alright?” I said, “sure, sure, everything is fine. I was just doing a test.” I’m not sure if it was the noise, the flame bouncing off the wall, my shirt being on fire, the smell of burnt hair and fabric, or some combination of these things, but she had a remarkably doubtful look on her face. Carl

Woe is me

Sent sometime in early 2001 or late 2000. This is the email where “This is me” started!

The “Woe is me” subject seems to keep popping up, so I thought that I would tell you a story. Oh, I almost forgot. Following my message concerning “our beautiful cousin Sherie”, Annie said that from now on I am supposed to tell you that this is me. So I will do that now. “This is me.”

I work in the propane business as a repair type guy. Uncle Dick can relate to this, no doubt, as he once worked in the fuel oil business. On a cold and windy winter day, the furnace repair calls just kept coming in. Finally I arrived at my last stop for the day. It was a mobile home, and I thought that this one would be a piece of cake. However, it was not the usual problem this time, and as I was at the time fairly new to the repair aspect of the job, it took several trips back to the truck for parts until I finally got things right.

Now the night before, we had about 12 inches of a powder snow, and every time I went out to the truck the snow stuck to my boots. Try as you may, you just can not stomp it all off. Now on this type of furnace, I had to lay down on the floor to work on it. There is another profession which gets to lay down while they work, but I can’t seem to remember what it is just now. At any rate, the snow of course melts off of your boots once you are back inside, and at the end of the job as I got up off the floor I noticed that my clothes were wet from wrist to shoulder, and from shoulder to knee.

So I said to the customer, “I must have tracked in a lot of snow, because I’m all wet.” The customer graciously replied, “No, No, don’t give it a thought. You didn’t do that, the toilet overflowed.” It was a long ride home that night. Carl