Monster in the Basement

There’s a device living in my basement which has a habit of baffling me every Fall. I guess the technical term for it is “manifold.” It is a plumbing marvel--a contorted tangle of copper tubing and valves, punctuated by several pumps and even more outlets. Its intended function is to carry water to and from the water heater, to and from the multitude of hose loops that run under the floor upstairs, and now, part of downstairs too. It was installed by Yank the plumber, but an imaginative neophyte might suppose we’d commissioned Rube Goldberg, or maybe Captain Nemo.

Here is what I do every Fall. Just as I’ve reached the end of my ability to cheerfully get up in the morning while setting cold feet on the even colder floor, and fishing around for a bathrobe, I decide it won’t hurt to fire up the furnace...just a crack. But it doesn’t work. It takes a while to figure this out, because radiant heat is notoriously slow to take decisive and noticeable action, just as it is slow to ease off once you’ve turned your entire upstairs into a too-toasty sauna. So I pad around the floor for a couple days, feeling for the tell-tale warm patches. No dice. Then I enter the netherworld of the house, and stare at the manifold with its 18 feed valves and 18 return valves, and numerous who-knows-what valves spread haphazardly along the rest. Surely I’m bright enough to comprehend the thing, and surely, with enough staring, it will all begin to make sense. This morning I noticed one thing: the feed valves above the pumps were closed. More padding, more feeling, more staring at the copper hydra, hoping something else will occur to me. This afternoon I noticed something else: the return valves that let the water out of the loops and back to the heater were closed too. Yes. One needs open loops. I just checked--the thermometer which is supposed to tell you the temp of water entering the loops has crept from nothing to at least registering warmth. It must, for the system to be functioning correctly, eventually be exceeding the returned water thermometer’s reading by 15 degrees F. The water heater has begun to kick on and roar with greater frequency. I take this to mean it’s discovered that there is, in fact, water to heat as the system perhaps has finally begun to circulate. Yank the plumber is coming over Thursday. I will ask him every possible question I can think of and this time take notes. Probably even draw a detailed diagram. The basement beast really needs to learn who’s boss.