With some of the coldest weather of the season on the way, on Thursday I noticed that the furnace wasn’t coming on. I could hear the exhaust fan starting, but the burner wasn’t coming on and no air was coming out of the vents. I got a very efficient Lennox system 8 years ago and it has had a lot of issues. Fortunately it came with a 10-year warranty, but I still have to pay for labor, which isn’t cheap. I called the people who installed it and they said they would send someone out the next day. It was 63 degrees in the house and would drop to 58 degrees by the next morning, which is pretty cold. They came out in the morning and said the gas valve was shorted out and would need to be replaced, but they would have to order the part from Lennox. It should be arrive Monday. The problem was Saturday it was supposed to go down to 24 degrees. I could move out of the house, but the pipes might freeze, so I was looking up how to drain the pipes. The repair guy asked if I had any space heaters I could use, which I don’t. 
I had done something similar when the air conditioner failed this past summer. It was really hot and they said it could be a week before the part arrived (supply chain issues) so I bought a window air conditioner from Walmart for $100. Given that just the diagnostic visit is over $200, it really isn’t horrible to shell out another $200 for the A/C or $120 for the 4 space heaters. The labor for the valve replacement will be $350. The four little heaters did a great job of keeping the house warm and eventually I could turn them down to a lower setting. At full blast I calculated that the electricity would cost about $1 per hour to run all four. So over the 3-day weekend, up to $72. At night I kept heaters pointed towards some of the key pipe locations and no pipes froze. I didn’t put heaters in the crawlspace, but the temperature there never went below 40 degrees, so the pipes were safe. And now it shouldn’t go below freezing for a while, so I don’t have to worry about keeping those running all night.
It got me thinking that once the warranty on this system expires, I should just get a new unit. It might be good to get a heat pump this time and get rid of my gas appliances which would save me from paying about $30 per month to Atlanta Gas Light to maintain aging gas lines. Also since all of my electricity is offset with solar energy credits, I could eliminate my greenhouse gas footprint for the house. I did some calculations and even paying the connection charge for natural gas, gas is probably cheaper than electricity for heating. Plus heat pumps don’t last as long since they run for more of the year than just an A/C unit. However, the Lennox system has been a real lemon anyway.
The part did not arrive on Monday. They got it in on Wednesday and came out Thursday to install it. The little heaters have been working great, but I did blow another fuse because I forgot an outlet in the living room was on the same circuit as my bedroom. The guy worked for over an hour and the heat came back on, but after a couple of hours it was back off again. This time it is a different problem because the exhaust blower isn’t coming on first like it was doing originally. They said someone would come out tomorrow . . . A week to fix the first problem and possibly another week if there is another part to order. I’m getting my money’s worth out of the little space heaters, but they will cost me when the power bill comes. Edit: They came out the next day and said a wire had come loose, so they put it back and didn’t charge for the visit.
Today I got the power bill, which was $101. I was using electric heat during a particularly cold week. I had not had a power bill over $100, even during the summer, for over five years. I probably used $50-60 of additional electricity, which isn’t bad (about what I paid for 2 of the heaters), but for anything other than temporary use, the cost of electric heat would be pretty awful.