The Dragon Under the House

This is what’s going on in my life right now:

Over a year ago I started having problems with my furnace. My landlord, being a cheap old goat, wouldn’t actually fix anything. He’d just get it going again which resulted in me calling either him or his worthless assistant every three days and missing a lot of work.

At some point I ran out of gas and called the gas company to deliver another 100 gallons. The gas man very generously offered to relight the pilot for me. Since I fear I may blow my eyebrows off I agreed. I mean just how smart can it be to stick a lit match into a stream of gas? That’s a design flaw if I ever saw one.

Anyway, he couldn’t get the pilot to light and he determined that it must be dirty and needed cleaning. So he took the thermocouple back to the shop and later in the afternoon another gas man returned it, installed it, and lit my pilot light thus keeping my eyebrows intact.

Now I am renting the trailer, so this is not my furnace. It belongs to the trailer park and thus they are responsible for it’s upkeep. Which means once a year my landlord should come clean the damn thing so the thermocouple doesn’t get clogged. But he doesn’t which is why the gas man ended up with the job.

That didn’t really solve my problem because the entire furnace is dirty, not just the thermocouple. So whenever I turn on the heat it sounds like a roaring dragon breathing fire under the trailer. I adore dragons, but this makes me very nervous. I asked my landlord several times to just clean the furnace. He didn’t think it was dirty so he ignored me.

Roughly 6 months ago the worthless old goat of a landlord sold the trailer park to a company that actually owns several properties and overall seemed very professional. I was very hopeful. That lasted until fall when the pilot light went out.

I tried several times and could not light it. Thinking it was just my fear keeping me from really sticking a lit match into a stream of gas, I asked my boyfriend to help me. He couldn’t light it either. We huddled in the floor for an hour, pressing the button, turning it off, turning it on, fumbling with match after match, consulting the directions again and again…It just was not working.

The next day, as luck would have it, my new landlord was in the park working on a wiring problem next door. Cheered by a landlord actually fixing something, I hurried over and explained my problem. He came over promptly and that’s when everything went to hell.
First he informed me that I was out of gas. I wasn’t and it was ridiculous for him to say so because he didn’t even go out to the tank and look at the gauge. We argued about this for a bit and just to prove me wrong, he took the pilot out of the furnace and tried to lit it with a blow torch (dangerous!)

Much to his annoyance, the pilot actually lit as he was telling me for the umpteenth time that I was out of gas. Score one for me.

It was a short lived victory, however. He concluded my matches weren’t “powerful” enough and suggested that I invest in a long lighter instead of those kitchen matches. He said my match wasn’t reaching the flame. Now the long lighter he’s talking is shorter than a long kitchen match so I don’t know what in the hell he was thinking, if he was thinking at all. The fact that it took a blow torch to light the pilot should be a clue that all is not well with the furnace dragon, but evidently this tidbit also escaped him.

Next he told me that I had a fairly new furnace so I really shouldn’t be having any problems. Let me tell you, Readers, that my trailer is over 10 years old. The furnace is the factory original.
By now I was a good bit irked and said so. To pacify me, my landlord promised to clean the whole thing if it would make me feel better. I said it would and he promised to stop by ‘one day next week’

He never showed.

Well, I take that back, one day he appeared in front of my house and sat in his van staring at me through my open door until I got up and walked onto the porch. Then he sped away. Maybe the dragon scared him.

Let’s see, that was October 2008. Soon after I brought another 100 gallons and when I went to pay the gas company informed me that I had a $90 charge on my bill. I was stunned. I always pay. What was this? Cleaning the thermocouple. But the trailer park said they would pay. They didn’t.

I was very embarrassed. I felt like a deadbeat, even though it wasn’t really my debt because I don’t own the trailer. I obtained a copy of the bill and took it to the trailer park office which was closed. I forgot that they close early on Wednesday. I guess avoiding people is a lot of work and it’s easier to do it with rather brief office hours. I put the bill in the mail slot. I didn’t hear another word about it so I naively assumed that the new landlord paid it. After all, when he purchased the park he assumed both the assets and the debt.

Now it is January 2009 and time to buy gas again. I’m not out, but I am low and I am tired of being stingy with the heat. It would be nice to have a comfortable warm bedroom at night instead of turning the heat down to 60 and putting extra blankets on the bed. It would be nice to come home to a warm house in the evenings instead of a 55 degree house.

Now guess what the gas company said when I ordered another 100 gallons? Yes. Exactly. There’s an unpaid balance of $90 on your bill. This time I got the impression that they wouldn’t deliver the gas until they got paid. And I don’t blame them, I would want my money too.

It’s a gamble. I would continue to be heat stingy and maybe ride out the winter. But if we have a long winter or cold temps I am screwed. Even if the weather suddenly turns warm I will be in this same boat later unless I move. Of course, if I end up dealing with the same gas company in a new place the boat will be following me.

So I broke down and paid up. While I was at I coughed up more bucks to have the furnace cleaned. Might as well stop worrying about that dragon.

When I go to pay the rent next month I intend to bring up all of this again with the landlord. There is the slightest possibility that I will be reimbursed. I doubt it. It may help if I bring the dragon. Do dragons eat landlords?