The Heat Is On

"Never crawl into a furnace when the pilot is lit."

With the promise of rising gas prices and winter knocking at the door, I decided to make sure the furnace still works. One of the first things I had to do was crawl inside and retrieve those weird triangular pieces. Most had fallen down and three had broken in half. I beleive they are simply heat deflectors but since they are made of clay they also help to hold the heat between cycles. Last Winter I wanted to set them back up but they seemed to always be too hot to handle. After most of them were set back up I flipped on the thermostat and opened the gas valve. With a quick light from a match (that part always scares me) the pilot was lit. I then adjusted the flame to a lovely blue hue.
So now we have heat, but since the thermostat resides around 60 degrees I probably won't need to adjust all the dampers for another month or so. Ah, the joys of a gas converted, gravity feed, coal furnace.