How to spend one's first evening of winter break

• Arrive home to the welcoming smell of t-butyl mercaptan in some, but not all areas of the house
  
  
• Call natural gas company to report gas leak
  
  
• Open windows
  
  
• Hear CO detector go off
  
  
• Put cats in pet carrier, kids in coats and head to neighbors
  
  
• Call gas company again
  
  
• Call neighbors to tell them we've let ourselves into their house
  
  
• Gas company reports fire department will be coming too
  
  
• Wait
  
  
• Neighbors come home, our kids play with their kid
  
  
• Their cat hisses at our cats
  
  
• Gas company and fire department arrive. Vent house. Close up again.
  
  
• Fire company determines CO is coming from water heater and/or furnace and the water heater has a hole in it and needs to be replaced.
  
  
• Listen to fire department tell us not to turn on furnace until someone comes to check it or fix it.
  
  
• Find "turn on the water and hope for the best" to be insufficient precautionary steps against freezing pipes.
  
  
• Call extremely odd but competent heating and cooling guy.
  
  
• Agree that our pipes would probably not freeze by 8am if our house was at 70 degrees now.
  
  
• Explain that our house is at approximately 20 degrees now.
  
  
• Wait.
  
  
• Observe that kids are all tired and hungry and getting on each other's nerves.
  
  
• Observe that our cats are hungry and getting on each other's nerves.
  
  
• Return to house to get Mac-n-cheese and another cat carrier.
  
  
• Heating and cooling guy arrives, assesses safety of furnace, fires furnace up and sets at 50 degrees for the evening once assured humans and pets will be retreating to a hotel.
  
  
• Agrees to show up at 8:30 to replace WH, recommends replacing furnace, tells Dr. H all about the problems he has with his colon and his ex-wife.
  
  
• Go through house quickly to collect necessities for the evening.
  
  
• Retreat to hotel over protests of neighbors, having already taken up four hours of their evening.
  
  
• Get kids/cats settled in hotel. Look over furnace brochures. Check consumer reports and manufacturer's website. Note that a 20+ year furnace in our poorly constructed house is likely to have very low efficiency.
  
  
• Call heating and cooling guy in the morning to find out if they sell the 93% efficient furnaces in the manufacturer's product line in addition to the 80% efficient one he gave us the brochure for.
  
  
• Pack up cats and kids, meet heating and cooling guys at house, install 93% efficient, two-stage furnace and new water heater.
  
  
• Buy new CO detectors.