It’s the middle of July. We are currently in a heat dome and are drenched in wildfire smoke from Canada. Naturally, you would think this post would be about summer heat. It’s not. 

This post is about winter heat.

Before the furniture even moved into the new house back in September, I had someone out to service the furnace for winter. It was already getting down to freezing at night, and I turned the heat on low so that the pipes would not freeze. Our previous house had natural gas. The new house has oil.

To my surprise, the annual maintenance for an oil furnace not only took much longer than the annual maintenance for my natural gas furnace, but it was also a lot more expensive. I chalked it all up to a learning experience. When I purchased this house, I was told that the furnace was new within the past 5 years.

When touring the house, the furnace looked older than 5 years to me. However, I am unfamiliar with oil heat. From what I heard, oil runs “dirty.” I attributed the fact that the furnace looked older than 5 years to be due to the fact that it was an oil furnace running dirty that had not been serviced in a while.

 The furnace has issues. After that initial service call for annual maintenance in September, I then had a total of three emergency calls this winter for various issues. By chance, one of the techs who came out for pne of the emergency calls told me he had worked on this furnace for years. “Years?” I asked. “They told me this furnace was new within 5 years. The tech laughed. “It’s at least 25 years old.” He said.

Given that the furnace was having so many issues this past winter, I was thinking I need a new one. The last thing I needed was for that furnace to quit when we were buried under 6 feet of snow. No one would be able to get to it to take it out and replace it. Not to mention, we would be without heat.

If I was going to put in a new furnace, I decided I needed to convert from oil to propane. It is very, very hard to get house insurance with oil heat. It’s easier to get house insurance with propane heat. Natural gas is not available in the Adirondacks. We are “off grid.” 

I got an estimate for the conversion. I decided to move ahead with it. The HVAC company doing the conversion told me to run my oil tank out of oil prior to the conversion to make the oil tank easier to remove. It made sense to me. 

The oil furnace was really struggling even more so starting in March. Every day I wondered if it was going to die. It persisted.

Sometime in May, the furnace stopped working. Either I ran the tank out of oil, or the furnace died. I scheduled my conversion for July. The float on the oik tank said I still have ¼ tank of oil left. I’m pretty sure that float is not accurate. It had been on ¼ of a tank for several weeks. 

Once the furnace stopped, we did have some chilly nights. It was still getting down in the 40s at night. There was nothing that could be done. We just piled on extra blankets and waited for summer to come. 

The handyman who helps me said that he thought I should wait until the oil furnace “shit the bed” to convert to get as much use out of it as possible. While it made sense to me, I also did not want to be stuck without heat in winter when no one can get to it to repair or replace. 

I found out from the neighbor next door that the people who sold the house KNEW the furnace had issues. They had rigged a lamp to it. When the furnace quit, the lamp would glow red and the neighbor knew to call the kids for repair. The woman who owned this house died and her kids inherited it, so it sat empty for a year. They had it priced way too high. 

When they sold this house, they said that furnace was 5 years old. It was 25 years old and had issues. They knew it had issues because they had that lamp rigged to it so that the neighbor could call for service when it quit.

The conversion from oil to propane is currently on day two of a three-day process.

They took my oil furnace out on day one. I did not, in fact, run the oil tank out of oil. The oil furnace died. It legitimately “Shit the bed,” as the handyman suggested I wait for. Thankfully, it shit the bed in May instead of in January when we got 6 feet of snow over 5 days. 

What was wrong with the furnace? Well, it had a cracked converter. If you know anything about furnaces, you know that a cracked converter is a HUGE issue. First, a cracked converter is not something that can be fixed. It is the death punch to a furnace. Second, a cracked converter is not only a huge fire exposure but also a huge carbon monoxide hazard. We are SO, SO lucky we did not have either the smoke alarms, the carbon monoxide alarms, or both going off at any point this winter up until that thing died.

I truly think Angel Jude has been watching over us. The neighbors at the old house attempted to burn down our house in July 2025 and then pounded on the door every single night screaming “Fire!” I have major PTSD over anything fire related. If either the smoke alarms or the carbon monoxide alarms go off in this new house, I would have major meltdown. First, I would need to get all the cats out of the house. But I would have major meltdown.

I would not feel safe in our new house if one of those alarms had gone off because the furnace was dying. I am still trying to overcome the trauma of attempted arson from our old house last year. 

I am really glad I decided to move forward and schedule the conversion when I did.

The conversion Is challenging due to the layout of the house. The technicians are excellent. 

As I said, we are on day two of conversion right now. They are currently working.

On day three of conversion, our propane tanks will be delivered. The gas company will hook everything up, check all the lines for leaks, fire up the new furnace, and be sure we have heat. They will do al their safety inspections. Then the HVAC company will come back and do all their safety inspections once it has the propane to run. 

I have all brand-new carbon monoxide and smoke alarms installed in this new house too. 

Say a little prayer that all goes well. This is the largest home project I have ever done.

When we were in the old house, I had plans to do upgrades and projects there too. I did do some of the upgrades. I upgraded all the plumbing in that house. It had galvanized steel piping that was over 100 years old that I replaced. Other than that, I ended up spending almost $17,000 to repair intentional damage that the neighbors caused to that house. 

I didn’t get to do any more upgrades to the house I sold because I was constantly repairing damage that they had caused. No, I did not put in claims on my home insurance. I know better. If I had, I never would have been able to sell that house because there would have been an open lawsuit for intentional damage. Not to mention, anytime I made a report, their behavior escalated. If I had put claims on my house insurance for the damage they caused, we would not have been able to sell. We would not have been able to leave.

Paying $17,000 to repair the intentional damages they caused is part of the reason why I was only able to break even on that house. 

In our new home here in the North County, we are safe. No one is causing intentional damage to this house. That means that when I fix something, I am either taking care of maintenance or doing an upgrade. I can actually plan and dream in this house.

One thing I wanted to do in the old house and never got to do was to paint rooms. I have never painted a room in my life. I never got the chance in that house. I was constantly scrambling with harassment, damages, and injuries inflicted upon me by those neighbors.

In this new house, I want to paint a room. I have never done it before. 

The first room I paint will be one of the upstairs rooms. I don’t go upstairs much. That way if I don’t do a good job of it, I won’t have to see it every day. I want to have the experience of being able to do some things myself without having to try to hire and pay people.

If painting an upstairs room goes well, then I really want to paint one wall (an “accent” wall) in my bathroom. I am thinking either mint green or sage green.

Both rooms upstairs are dark colors. One is a dark brown! I want to paint it something light and brighten it up. That way it looks bigger too. 

I won’t do any painting projects until next year. I already have my hands full this year with the oil to propane conversion and plumbing and electric work I had to have done when we first moved in. 

Once our new furnace is up and going, I am done with house projects for 2026. I need to rest and save money. I will save the painting for 2027. 

That’s not entirely true. I think I may need to try to stain my deck this fall. We will see. 

For now, we are on day two of three for our oil to propane conversion. Please hold us in your thoughts that it all goes well and that we have heat with no problems this winter. 

I will say that this house is the warmest house I have ever lived in during the winter. I’m hoping we have good luck when we are on propane this year instead of on oil. I don’t want to have any service calls. I definitely don’t want any alarms going off. 

In the middle of a heat dome, we are making sure we will have heat for our second Noth Country winter.