Advantages of The Developers' Home

On Sunday morning I came out of our bedroom to be greeted by Ryan saying, "Is our heat supposed to work?"

"Umm, yeah? That's usually the idea, isn't it?"

We've been having a very mild fall (in the 80s until this past weekend), but Sunday morning was cold enough to warrant a desire for the heat running. Especially since Gareth had awoken with rather cold hands and feet. After a spring and summer of sleeping with no blankets, he is loath to have any bedtime coverings.

I promptly called The Landlord, despite it's being Sunday and knowing that his ward would be starting in an hour and a half. Thankfully he saw the necessity of us having working heat. After spending a few minutes fiddling with the central air unit, the thermostat, and the fuses, he was able to determine that there is no heating element in the central air unit. The Landlord figured there must be 6 individual heating elements throughout the house controlled by dials on the wall and that the central air unit was just supposed to act as a blower to move the air around. (He'd told us when we moved in that the dials on the wall were for electric baseboard heat and that they'd taken that out to put the central air in, so they didn't do anything. I'd assumed he was right since he'd known the couple who originally developed the property and lived in our unit.)

Gareth and I trotted off to church and arrived home 3 hours later to find the house exceedingly warm. But the air blowing out of the vents had never become warm. It had gotten warm outside, but not warm enough that it would make wearing a light sweater inside the house uncomfortable. I called The Landlord again to give him an update and he told me that he'd contacted the Furnace Man to come and take a look at it.

Furnace Man came today and apparently what we've got is electric radiant heating through the walls and ceiling (and possibly even the floor?). It's basically electric wires spaced out behind the walls, etc. and the dials on our walls turn those on and the heat seeps into the house. And we've got some really good insulation in our unit because we have this type of heating system. Furnace Man said that this type of heating is some of the best but most people don't get it because it's so expensive to install (but quite cost effective to run). Pretty cool, non? Apparently The Developers were wealthy and now we're reaping the benefits of their wealth. Other advantages of our home thanks to them? A garage, having 2/3-ish of the house rather than just 1/2, tons of storage space, and a nice, large kitchen with more cupboards than even I can use.