One Smart Moose

We're basking in summer-like weather in Bodega Bay. And, no, we're not complaining.

Ironically, today's tale on the road to fulltiming is a chilly one.

Last night's forecast called for a comfortable overnight low of 41 degrees. Since we were making a brief overnight stop, we didn't setup anything we didn't need. Propane was one. Our indoor/outdoor thermometer was two. Confident our trusty electric heat pump would keep us warm at any outside temp above the low 30s, we set the thermostat at a comfy temp and called it a night.

Just before sunrise we woke up to one chilly moose. Boris bumped up the thermostat on the heat pump. Nothing. Together we realized the heat had not run for several hours. Convinced the heat pump or thermostat was broken, he flipped the switch to gas heat. It fired right up.

"But, that's not going to do us any good," Boris said. "We didn't turn on the propane."

Boris made a beeline for the great outdoors to turn on the propane.

"It's cold out there!" he proclaimed.

How cold? With the gas furnace finally firing, he grabbed the indoor/outdoor thermometer and put the probe on the outside step. The rapidly falling digits finally settled on 32 degrees.

Ohhhh! Turns out it got too cold for the heat pump to keep us warm. When the heat pump can't do it's job, the gas furnace fires up automatically. Without any fuel, our gas furnace gave it up and shut down the whole system.

We were relieved to discover our heating system wasn't broken. It was smart.

Tonight's forecast calls for a low of 37. And, yes, the propane is on.