The Round Hill House

Let me start this story the way it started for me. It was early morning in late February, a few hours after midnight. Officially my birthday.

BOOM

My eyes flung open. Of the many sounds one does not want to hear at 3am, a house rattling cannon ball fired beneath your bed is one of them. In the seconds that followed, my brain attempted to comprehend what had just happened.

Sometimes trucks drive by the house at night and wake me up

The rock quarry nearby does occasional blasting

Every so often we can hear howitzer training at West Point

But this did not sound like a truck or a distant boom. Quarry blasting and West Point drills do not happen at night. This sounded like it was in the house. This sounded like it was right below me. This… Then I heard another sound one does not want to hear at 3am, the sound of rushing water.

SHIT SHIT SHIT

I was now up. Where were my slippers? My hands were shaking as I attempted to put on pants. The sound of rushing water continued along with bubbling from the radiators. Where was my shirt? It was still pitch black in the house when I ran downstairs in pajama pants and slippers (no shirt because I couldn’t find it) expecting to find god knows what.

Front room – CHECK. No water. 4 walls. No smoke.

Lounge – CHECK. No water. Windows intact.

Dining room and kitchen – CHECK. No obvious issues

As I approached the basement door, I could hear the water and smelled soot. I flipped on the light and rushed into the deep.

There was already a quarter inch of water in the basement when I ran down the stairs. The air was filled with smoke (in retrospect this was likely just soot) and I was finding it difficult to breathe. The air was hot and thick. I still did not yet know what I was looking at.

A moment more and I was oriented. Water was clearly pouring out of the furnace which gave me direction. I had trained for this moment (side note: everyone should train for this moment). I ran to the furnace, found the main water line, and shut off the flow of water. That seemed to do it. Within seconds the rush of water from the bottom of the furnace subsided and I had an opportunity to catch my breath. For the moment, the house was at peace and the damage had stopped. The basement floor was wet. The furnace seemed lopsided in its casing with insolation falling out but I didn’t see any additional fire or smell new smoke. I didn’t hear any more flow of water. Sigh. With soaked feet, I walked back upstairs to find my wife still asleep in bed, unfazed.

“The furnace exploded,” I mumbled as I collapsed back in bed. It was 3:10am.

“Okay…[inaudible],” mumbled my wife in response. Sometime later that morning I awoke to her shouting, “WAIT, THE FURANCE EXPLODED?”

By the evening of my birthday I would have a much better (although not perfect) understanding of what had happened. Put simply, my furnace did explode. The why is another undetermined matter. Pressure built up, all the safeties failed, and a twelve inch chuck of cast iron shot out the side, allowing all the water in the pipes to flow out onto the basement floor. Emergency plumbers had arrived in the afternoon to inspect the situation. They confirmed that the furnace was shot and mentioned their boss would be over later in the day (never a good sign).

The lead plumber was a man in his sixties who did more management these days than plumbing. He had lived in the area his entire life and, when we introduced, he began to tell me stories of other “Board” houses in the town (ours was a Brewster – Board house). I found this local storytelling to be a common occurrence when inviting tradesmen and contractors into the house. Once an electrician had told me of a nearby 1800s home that was built with an active stream running through the basement. I thought it must have been a convenient source of water, at least when there was no flooding. There were several homes in the town which were known to be “Board” homes. Unfortunately, one that had been run as a restaurant had recently burned down. While we hoped it would be restored, it was a known fact that it would be demolished so that a bagel store could put in a new strip mall.

Small talk aside, the plumber went down to the basement to deliver some bad news. The furnace was irrevocably broken and a replacement was not going to be cheap. At least $11k he said.

GULP

On top of that, the replacement would take at least a week to arrive. It was the middle of February with temperatures ranging between 15 to 25 degrees, so he suggested that I invest in some space heaters, and quickly. I understood the concern. 16 hours after losing the furnace, temperature in the house was in the lower 50s.

For the next week, my wife and I were on a mission to prevent the house from freezing. We ran our wood stove and two small space heaters 18 hours a day, only turning them off at night while we slept. We had plenty of wood, so that was not a concern, but I honestly had no idea how well it would heat the 4,500 square foot house for an extended period of time. Hot water was not available, but we did have our gas stove, tea kettle, and any hot water we warmed directly on the fire. Thankfully, our little wood stove worked like a champ and pushed temperatures in the house as high as 77 degrees. Space heaters kept us warm during the day and we spent our evenings in the lounge in front of the crackling fire.

Within a week a new furnace was delivered and installed. The price was steep although it was in line with what we expected. While the process itself had no drama, the plumbers told me after the fact that they were petrified while brining the new furnace in and taking it down the basement stairs. They were convinced the weight was either going to crack tiles in the kitchen or cause it to crash to the basement floor. Neither of those events happened, although that would have made quite the ending for this story.

For the remainder of the winter I woke up in the middle of the night every time the house shuddered, the radiators gurgled, or a truck rolled by. Honestly, I still do every so often. My hope is that others will be spared this experience. This incident was enough for our collective life times. Just in case, however, I encourage all home owners, especially those with older homes, to have emergency plans that include the locations and functions of all water and gas shut offs. Keep batteries in your smoke detectors fresh, have flash lights and fresh water in reserve and, more than anything, be safe out there.