Heat that Frogurt

So tomorrow we sign paperwork to have about $17,000 worth of HVAC work done in our new house.

I’m having a fun time wrapping my head around that number. It’s big, but you know, in a way it’s not so big. With a tax refund, some money left from the sale of our house in Sugar City, and some money we have in the bank, we’ll be able to cover the bill without having to get a loan, without having to pay interest at all. That’s good news, like my Frogurt.

But that’s a lot of money. That’s about five years’ worth of saving our pennies in order to put cash away for a rainy day. We’d better not have any rainy days for a few years after tomorrow.

But then there’s this: Our first electric bill – we have electric zone heating in the house – was $128 for three weeks, and that was basically three weeks of everybody wearing sweatshirts and freezing and me sitting on the potty on the main level, watching my breath form clouds in the cold. Why throw money into a pit while being cold the whole time when we can put that same money into replenishing a rainy day account while we’re paying a lot less for heat and staying a lot, lot warmer? I can’t see a reason to go that way any more.

And there’s work to be done: The money we put into the heating system – natural gas, with a 95% efficient furnace – doesn’t include the drywall repair and placement, which I imagine isn’t going to be fun to accomplish, given the unique plastering jobs done throughout the house.

But that’ll mean I can also run wires for speakers and the subwoofer downstairs, in the ceiling rather than on the ceiling as we did in Sugar City, adding also the possibility I can rejigger the electric layout downstairs to put in a few more switches and isolate some of the lights downstairs, which right now all turn on with only one switch. But am I smart enough to do that? I don’t know. I guess I’ll give it a shot. And I’ll be much warmer while doing it. In theory.

Can I go home now?