Hot hot hot

Sunday night there was a bad, bad storm in Nashville.

The miserable snow that covered much of the nation last month somehow missed Nashville, but this time we weren't so lucky. We got rain. Lots of rain. And then, the temperatures dropped below freezing...while it was still raining.

Welcome to the skating rink, y'all!

I was working at the retail gig until 8:30pm, 30 minutes prior to the forecast for the ice to begin forming on the roads and trees and everything else exposed to the elements. By the time I got home, the roads were wet, but perfectly driveable.

There was something off when I got home, though. Every once in a while, there was this loud banging noise, kind of like sneakers in a dryer. The noise was off-putting, but I figured it was a truck somewhere nearby. That is, until I felt the house shake. Loud noise plus house shaking? Homeowners nightmare. Great.

The second time it happened, I was in my bedroom, 1/2 way into my flannel pajamas, the ones with the squirrels on them, and I heard the noise coming from just outside...and the house shaking again. I knew immediately what it was. My HVAC unit was having a fit. It sounded less like simple banging than like something thwapping the inside of the mechanism's metal casing each time the fan rotated. It was unsettling at best.

I got dressed again, turned off the heat, put on a raincoat, grabbed my flashlight and put on my stepping outside clogs. I made my way quickly to the side of the house and saw that  the top of the unit was covered in ice. I went back inside, grabbed a container of coarse salt and went back outside to pour it on the ice. I don't know if that actually helped, but when I went back inside and turned on the heat, very slowly, there was no more banging. No more thwapping. No more house shaking.

There is still ice covering the unit, but I am breathing a sigh of relief. My house is warm while it is cold outside.

It is a chilling reminder, however, that my HVAC unit is from 1981, and I have yet to have it serviced...in nearly eight years of home ownership. Chilling reminder, indeed.