I spent some time during my day off this week in the depths of the basement of my mothers house, being it’s the middle of November we’re entering into the heating season for my area. This just means it getting cold outside, and we will need to start using our heating system. Before we start using it it’s best to give it a tune up and change filters/check for leaks and such, mostly just preventive maintenance.
Now this house is over 100 years old, and the basement although it is cement is fulled of cobwebs and I avoid it as much as possible since I’m not a huge fan of spiders/ webs because of a past experience (that may have been Lyme but I still swear was from a spider bite) , but to change the filters on the heating systems I need to go down there. The “plan” was to go down change the filters and to come right back upstairs. Basically to spend as little time as possible down there but this didn’t really happen that way. I ended up spending a little over an hour inspecting different aspects of the basement.
Once I got down there I found our ventilation system for heater 1 was leaking and allowing water to drip down onto some of the vent pipes rusting them out, at this point I then decided I needed to spend more time down there looking for leaks and such. My uncle had spend time fixing things here when they broke, but with his passing back in February it is just me and my mother living in this house now, so I figured it was time I stepped into the role and started taking more care of the house.
Heater 2 was easier to change the filter of, its kinda just held in place with tape since its missing a couple of parts mostly for air return from the upstairs. We don’t really use that side currently as it needs to have renovations done to be able to have someone live there, that being one of the major ones. I’m hoping to get things fixed up so it is rentable sometime during the next year but with my working schedule and other things in life getting in the way I’m not sure if we’ll get through it.
I’m glad I spent some time down there and plan on going back down and cleaning up some more soon, there’s a couple of work benches and it would be nice to have a workshop of sorts for tinkering, woodworking and such.