Heating the Carriage House
by Laurel ~ November 13th, 2008
There has been little talk of the 1879 carriage house, though I may have mentioned it early on in this blog. It has been used as office space for various businesses since the 1980’s, most notably by a lawyer and financial planner. The interior has been completely renovated and is business-ready — complete with ugly fluorescent lights and a multitude of electrical outlets in each room. There is almost 1400 square feet of finished space in the building, all but one room is on the second floor. This includes a full bathroom.
Our house was empty for more than a year (a neighbor reports) and electricity excluded, the carriage house mechanicals were completely shut down. We have been here six months now and should have taken on getting everything up and running before now, but the project ended up on the back burner. There is no running water at the moment, the large water heater was disconnected in favor of an 2.5 gallon on-demand system hooked into the bathroom sink. Makes sense for a business. We have seen a few pipe splits downstairs and have been wary about testing the water. It has a Lennox central A/C and heating system. It is time to get this system inspected and working .
On Thanksgiving we will have family staying with us — countdown about 14 days. While much of the carriage house is filled with boxes of books and other items that will be part of our ultimate studio space, there is one room outfitted as a bedroom. Once the bathroom and heat are functional it really is the perfect guest space and we need to make that happen in time for the holiday.
Today I talked to plumbers and learned that Lennox systems can only be worked on by Lennox certified HVAC people and guess what? The Lennox site will only give you the names of dealers. I even called Lennox and they seem to only direct people to dealers, not service people. One does not need to be a dealer to be certified to maintain the system, but Lennox only distributes dealer information. The two closest dealers are 30 and 32 miles away.
One of the plumbers came over to survey the system and can definitely work on the water component of it and will try to see if the Lennox system works by starting it. He turned out to be a pretty nice guy, took his time looking at our long laundry list of plumbing needs, quoted his rates, is credentialed and so on. He was also recommended to us by several local people. This plumber also happens to be friends with former owners and offered to make some phone calls about how and who maintained the mechanicals for them. Nice!
The second plumber we spoke with (also recommended) actually knew the carriage house has a Lennox system (though he has never worked on it) — small town, go figure. He was able to give us the name of a local Lennox certified maintenance person who lives right in town. So, good deal there — I really want a general maintenance check on the system before running it. Second plumber seemed pretty similar to the first one, though with a busier schedule, so we have the first guy coming in on Monday to begin work.
