We are 'oil' out!! (There is an Addendum to this....)

See my pun there?  Either way you state it, we have a small problem this morning.

We are out of oil.  When the oil goes out, the heating pump doesn’t work, it can’t pump the hot water into the coils which run along the baseboards of the house, thus providing us with heat.  It also can’t pump water into our hot water tank, so we don’t get any hot water either.  This is definitely not a good way to begin the morning when the house is cold!

I am hoping that today will gain momentum.  We woke up to a freezing cold house.  It was so cold that our bare feet felt numb on the hardwood floors, and I seriously, no joke, thought we would be able to see our breath!  When we had to get dressed it was pure torture, going from our warm snuggly pyjamas to our clothes for the day.  Even putting our feet in our boots was an ordeal because our boots were cold! Greg made porridge for everybody and it was lovely going off to school with a warm belly full of milky, brown sugary porridgy goodness.

On a regular day, once we arrive at school, we scatter.  Greg makes tracks to his classroom to prepare for the day, Charlotte either goes to Greg’s room to hang out or she goes to find her teacher to see if she can enter her classroom early.  Sometimes Mrs. Thrasher is prepared to be in the room until the first bell rings and sometimes she is not.  If she is not, then Charlotte comes to find either Greg or I and stays with us until the first bell rings.  I generally make my way to the staff room in order to leave my boots and coat, collect my shoes and sweater – I call this my Mr. Roger’s thing – and then make my way to the high school wing.  If I am not in the high school that day, then I skip over the staff room and go right to the classroom I am in that day, since I will need my boots and coat to go out for yard duty at recess time. This morning, however, I stopped in the staff room to make arrangements for the oil to be delivered.  James and Patrick no longer attend school so they don’t come with us, although they have their own list of work to do at home.  This morning we told them to read in bed, and to wait until they heard the oil truck arrive to deliver $1000 worth of oil to our humble abode.

Heating costs can vary in the hamlet based on a few things, some of which are logical and some which make no sense to me whatsoever.  The first is the actual cost of the oil.  The oil to fuel the buildings throughout Tuktoyaktuk is brought up on the barges from Yellowknife all the way up to Sachs’ Harbour, up and down the MacKenzie River and parts beyond.  This past summer the delivery of goods via barge was extremely threatened due to low water levels.  We were actually lucky our van was put on the second to last barge of the season because the last one was cancelled due to low water levels.  We had heard that the barge that actually had our van on it got stuck a few times on its way up, and was delayed a few days because of this. Anyway, in a capital society it’s all about supply and demand, so the cost of oil goes up depending on the supply of it.  It stinks, but it’s true.  When we purchased half a tank of oil in early December (and I’m sorry, I don’t know how many litres of oil our tank holds; it’s not in my realm of expertise) it cost us almost $2,000.  When we purchased oil again in early February, the with the ice road wide open, the cost of oil had gone down dramatically because the supply had been replenished.  What a relief!!

Another thing that affects heating costs is the weather.  When it’s extremely cold outside, and by that I mean -40C or below, especially at night, the heating is on more, thus using up precious oil.  Every time I hear the water gurgle in the coils along our living room I see dollar signs.  When the 

temperature is warmer but the wind is blowing, the heat comes on more frequently.  There is almost always a wind chill here too, seeing as we live on the shore of the Arctic Ocean.  Calm days are few and far between, but when they do occur, they are most welcome, as it saves on oil.

Apparently there is a way to check the amount of oil in your tank, which is found outside your house, supposedly along the same side of the house as the entrance for water delivery and sewage removal.  This makes sense since oil delivery involves another large truck backing up in the laneway beside your house.  This morning when Greg called he asked for $1000 worth of oil, which is payable by cash or credit card.  If you choose to pay by cash, you must stop by Gruben’s, which is the oil delivery business, and pay in person before delivery.  If you call in with a credit card number, delivery is usually within a few hours.  Here’s hoping our boys are at home getting warmer!

I am looking forward to coming home to a warmer house, although with how cold it was this morning I am unsure how long it will take to sufficiently heat up the place.

I guess there’s always soup for lunch!

ADDENDUM....

It got worse.  After a busy morning at school, we arrived home for lunch to find our boys dressed in their warmest sweaters wearing their boots because the floors were so cold.  To our shock and dismay, the oil truck had not made its delivery, and we could not be in touch with Grubens' because in Tuk, everything shuts down between 12 and 1 for lunchtime.  The schools, offices, and pretty well everybody except the grocery stores are closed over lunch so that families can go home and eat together.  On this particular day, however, we had to drink our soup out of our bowls because we were shivering with the cold and the soup couldn't make it to our mouths from the spoons!

After a series of phone calls, it was discovered there had been a transposition error and the oil was delivered.  We were busy with supper, and had the oven and stove going full throttle, along with our space heater, so we felt as though the house was warming up sufficiently.  WRONG!!  The oil was delivered, but that didn't necessarily spark the heat pump to begin working.  Apparently, one must get one's landlord to bleed the air lock out of the tube that connects the tank to the pump.  Who knew? Too bad for us that we didn't realize this until after midnight, shortly before Greg and I were headed to bed!

It was a pretty miserable night.  We put the space heater in the boys' room and closed their door, and took Charlotte to bed with us and layered ourselves in both pyjamas and blankets.  I wound up sleeping with my head between two pillows, like a pillow hat, and every time one of us moved, it brought a draught of icy air through the top of the blankets.  I slept no more than 30 minutes at a time, and spent far more time awake shivering than asleep.

By the time we had to get up and going the next morning, we could actually see our breath!  Greg found a piece of wood that we had kept in the back of the house, and he started a fire.  We haven't been using our wood stove very much for other reasons which I will not discuss right now, but we were certainly most grateful for it yesterday!  A phone call to our Patient and Long Suffering Landlords procured an airlock bleeding and before we knew it, our heat pump was happily chugging hot water along our baseboards and the Wilsons were toasty warm in no time at all!

Interestingly enough, we never lost hot water throughout this ordeal, which is unusual.  Normally we should have, but for some odd reason which we can't explain, the line that connects our oil supply to the water heater was not connected to the one heated by oil, but rather to the electric one.  This probably cost us a lot more money in electricity costs this winter, but it saved us over the last few days because we had hot water running through pipes that otherwise would have become cold enough to cause a pipe to burst or freeze and that cost would have fallen on us in our negligence to keep enough oil in the tank!

God sure does work in mysterious ways!  We have no idea how things got mixed up because we don't touch all the heating/wiring/water stuff in the utility room.  We have no idea how it works and when it doesn't, we call the Landlords!  Perhaps somebody re-routed our source of hot water during the Flood of 2014? (Please look in the archives for the account of that historic event in our adventures up here!).

I am amazed sometimes at how God looks out for us!  I think there are times, however, when our Guardian Angels must be exhausted, and honestly, I don't blame them!