winter wonderland and heating woes

I'll try and get a pic uploaded later today. It is SO beautiful here. We're having some very un-Puget-Sound-like winter weather in Poulsbo.

We had about 3" of snow on Saturday, and then it got quite cold... now it's snowing again and we've got a fresh inch or two. We missed the heavy snowfalls of 1-2' that blanketed some areas in Washington, but so much the better, especially given the state of the treads on my tires.

I think I've mentioned that this old farmhouse we've moved to has a wood-burning furnace. It's a bit of work, but I really welcome the exercise dealing with the firewood, and it really pumps out heat. There are ceiling vents downstairs and floor vents upstairs.

However, not too long after we moved in, the fan on the furnace came to a screeching halt. The local heating company (very nice people) took it away and managed to coax it back into some semblance of working order the very day before the temps dipped into the teens.

Only... where the fan was truly blowing before, it now seems to be just kind of reluctantly exhaling. When I found the bedroom not rising about 50 degrees, I called the heating company, who, of course, had about 150 other calls to handle from panicky locals and the last thing they were interested in was an ancient system for which they knew they could not find parts.

So I kept playing around with it, and finally found that if I really stuffed the furnace full and fed it frequently, I could get almost the entire upstairs to a reasonable temperature.

Now this is no small wood-burning stove - it holds quite a bit of wood. So I also let the property manager know that my budget was not anticipating burning a cord of wood a week through the winter and would she pretty please be so kind as to... do something. Word has it the heating company is going to rebuild the motor for me. Sometime. Meantime, it's now a balmy 26 degrees outside and most of the house except my office! is warming nicely. I never before had the opportunity to learn so much about the difference between teens and twenty-something.