🦋 Pssst, steam heat
The sounds my house makes during the winter time are many. This was really brought home to me over the last week or so when we have been fighting a losing battle to keep our boiler from calling it quits. I would stand quiet, tense, listening to the peeps and gurgles of our pipes and trying to divine from them how much longer we had. Lately -- yesterday morning -- the plumber (Tom O'Neill of West Orange, whom I recommend highly) put a sealer compound into the boiler's tank which seems to be holding up, and victory may yet be ours; though I think in any case, we will need to buy a boiler in the spring time. Now I sit quiet, relaxed, listening to the peeps and gurgles of our pipes and to the house's frame creaking, and marvel at the degree of personality which I hear -- I believe I have come to know the house's voice a lot better in this interval. One thing about steam pipes and radiators -- the verb "hiss" is used generically to describe the sound they make. But I think of the several sounds I hear the steam making, "hiss" accurately describes only two, both of which are sounds indicative of a problem -- these are the hiss of steam escaping from a broken air vent, and the distinct hiss of steam escaping from a cracked pipe. When steam remains inside the pipes where it belongs, it does not hiss. It sighs, pants, whooshes... and a couple of others that I have not yet come up with words to describe.
posted evening of Tuesday, January 13th, 2004
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