Gotta be a First

I am pretty certain that we have never before done what we did today. But before I tell you what we did, let me preface it by saying we woke today up to the first snow of the 2008-2009 winter season. Let's hope it's not a glimpse of the winter ahead since it's not even November yet.

Knowing last, night that today was going to be potentially cold and snowy, we cranked up the electric storage heater we have in the "lounge." (For those of you unknowledgeable about these heaters, the idea is that they store up heat in bricks during the night and release the heat in the day....all of which we have actually recently learned is not entirely true...but don't get me started!) This heater is new within the past couple months, and although we had one just like it when we first moved in, the landlords replaced it. Never did know why, but now that we have the new one to compare it to, I think it is because it had a broken damper by which to release the heat. The new one you can clearly hear it opening and closing, the other one just kinda had a steady release all the time no matter what you set it on.

Anyways, I digress. We have had the heater on somewhat off and on the past month. Initially it had this horrific burning/chemical smell radiating from it which my sensitive nose did not think was so nice. So after a few days it seemed to be burned off and haven't really smelled it since....until today. We had the thing cranked up to high over night. And wouldn't you know it, this morning the lounge stunk something fierce. I couldn't stand to be in there for more than a couple minutes at a time. So I pulled out the instructions/manual that came with the heater. I thought I had read them before. Apparently I didn't read, or missed, the WARNING section. Come to find out, the fumes can be dangerous, especially for those with prior respiratory problems. I'd probably fit that, at least for the past year. When you first get the thing, you are to give it a "commissioning" that comprises of at least 48 hours of leaving the heater on full blast with proper ventilation. You see where this is going, right?

So I guess we'd only half commissioned it, but once we got it fully charged it needed more commissioning. The only way to get the stench out and give the room ventilation was to leave a window open all day. After Mark got home he thought it still needed better ventilation and I had to agree since I still couldn't stand to be in there. So we opened more windows, left the door to the flat open in the hallway open, where there was another window open. All, mind you, with the temp being in the upper 30's and us being holed up in our bedroom with another heater on! Gotta be a first for sure. I wonder what the neighbors think as they pass and see our windows open! LOL!