Aaaaaaand GO! The renovation of the Historic Crescent Ranch Resort has officially kicked off! Code named “operation: move in” because, quite honestly, we cannot move in to the lodge in its current condition. In phase 1: warm me up, we need to get the furnaces running. Why heat when there are SO many things we need to focus on? Well, quite simply, we NEED water. And, being April, in Divide, Colorado, at 9200 feet above sea level, we have some serious challenges to deal with. Namely, the FREEZING COLD! And WIND! If we simply turn on the water, without having heat in the lodge, we are sure to create a top-tier water park inside the lodge. Without the water containment systems. Which would be cool. But, after thinking about it more, would be bad. So, phase 1 must be – warm me up!

Below are the 4 simple steps we followed to get some heat blowing in our lodge – read on, and be amazed!

phase 1: step 1: need gas? call someone smart!

Something I learned in 16 years of working in technology is this – you have to find smart people to do hard things. You can define “hard”, however you like, but for us, working with propane is, well, hard. Or maybe a better word is scary. We huddled together as an ownership group and kind of agreed that blowing up the house was not in our best interest. So… Our only option was to find someone smart to get this phase kicked off.

phase 1: step 2: fill ‘er up!

The first thing we needed to do was get propane in our tank. The tank had been sitting empty for who knows how long… And who knows for what reason. We did find out, during closing, that the previous owners had leased a different tank – which made us think that maybe this tank was bad. Which wouldn’t be good. Regardless, we called in the smart folks to figure this part out for us.

They pulled their permits. They came out. They filled the tank. They replaced parts. They did their tests. Annnnd – BAM! Not literally, thankfully. They got gas running into the house. Honestly, it probably couldn’t have gone smoother – which was a relief. Now, when you hire smart people, you need to listen to their advice. And the advice we were given was call someone else who was smart enough to tell us if our ancient furnaces worked properly before we attempted to crank ’em on. The thought being that they had been sitting for too long to simply assume they were going to work properly.

phase 1: step 3: need heat? call someone else smart!

Now that we had gas, we wanted heat. So we got some recommendations, and made some calls. We got the guy we wanted, and thankfully, he had time to come by before a big storm was about to blow through. Time to fire things up – literally!

phase 1: step 4: fire it up!

Our HVAC guy was VERY reluctant to service these old furnaces in the lodge, but, once we got them lit up, he was pleasantly surprised. Which is a good thing for us. After just a little bit of coaxing, we got the pilot lit and the burners burning. And BAM! Not literally, thankfully. We had heat blowing to all 3 levels of the lodge!

He wisely told us to get some carbon monoxide detectors and to call immediately if something weird happened. He was even nice enough to call us the next day to make sure we weren’t asphyxiated. Thankfully, we weren’t. And thankfully, the biggest problem we had was a sticky control in the large furnace. And the only problem it caused was a non-issue really.

We also had to replace the thermostats, because the heat didn’t turn off upstairs at all. At one point, it was 80 degrees up there! Don’t get me wrong, when it was 20 degrees outside, 80 inside was a welcome change. But, heat cost money – you know? So we took care of that right away!

So, we got heat people! And now that we got heat, phase 1: warm me up! can now be shut down in favor of phase 2: running water! Which, unfortunately, did NOT go so smoothly!