Are You Tired of Hearing About My Heat Yet?

There’s this rebate program out there, offering folks up to a thousand dollars to convert their heat to gas. Technically, it’s supposed to be incentive – for, you know, folks who haven't really thought about changing over yet. And, technically, I didn’t hear about it until after we were done. But, technically I don’t give a holy hoo. Money’s money, right? So I printed out the form.

Oh, I’d say about a month ago.

What follows are my thoughts on trying to fill it in this weekend:

1. Oh balls, they want my account number. Well, I’ll fill out the rest and just hold onto it until next month when the gas bill gets here. And if you think I’ll still know where this form is when the gas bill gets here — oh no wait, I’ll thumbtack it to my wall! There we go. I is so or-gee-nised…

2. Oh, balls! You have to have bought the equipment after September 1? When did we buy ours? How will I ever figure that out? Oh wait, hang on, I’ll check the blog archives… August. Damn. Well, it can’t hurt to call and ask. Do I call Keyspan or GasNetworks? GasNetworks, phew. Will anybody answer that number on the weekend? Yes, and huzzah! He says ignore what the instructions say, they go by installation date – I’m still in!

3. Model number? Balls! Where’s that old email from Keyspan from when I couldn’t find the model number to fill out the warranty? Jeez. You’d think I might have written the damn thing down somewhere. I hope I didn’t delete the email permanently. How many deleted emails are there in this g-d file? Oh good god, I am a chatty little devil, ain’t I? Blah-blah, blah-blah, blah-blah… Aha! Forty minutes later, here it is!

4. Wait, what does ECM mean? Did we buy a “Natural Gas Furnace ≥ 92% AFUE” or a “Natural Gas Furnace W/ECM ≥ 92% AFUE”? I don’t freakin’ know. I don’t know what AFUE is, either, but since both choices are the same on that, I’m assuming I don’t have to. The manual doesn’t mention any of this. Keyspan could probably tell me what I bought. If I asked. But I’m getting tired of this. Let’s just keep moving forward for now and come back to this question later.

5. Huh. I always thought “furnace” and “boiler” were different words for the same thing. Maybe – did we actually buy a “Natural Gas Steam Boiler ≥ 82% AFUE”? At least I know I can rule out the “Natural Gas Hot Water Boiler” – at ≥ both 85 and 92% AFUE – but why doesn’t the owners manual say any of these words in it anywhere? I mean, it might, actually. But there’s no index, and I’m getting tired of flipping through the g-d thing. It appears to just keep saying the same three things in thirteen different languages. Anybody out there speak Mandarin?

6. Keyspan could probably answer all these questions for me. I’ll just call them real quick. Yeah. Real quick my ass. I'm out of practice with this. I forgot about their phone system. And the fact that, on the weekends, they answer their phones but can’t actually answer any questions. Plus, when are they going to admit they’ve been bought out by national “lower case” grid, in some way other than the logo on the Ho Chi Minh tank? Whatever. I hang up after being on hold for twenty minutes. I don’t have the patience for this. Maybe I’ll send an email.

7. Hey, could we get a rebate on the water heater, too? Probably not. That was definitely installed before September 1st. But how would they ever know?

8. Receipts? Oh. Balls.

Well, that’s enough of that work for one weekend. Maybe, if I’m feeling industrious, I will send national gridspan a quick email this morning.

Then I can consider that enough of that for the entire week.