My family and I live in an incredible 1929 arts & crafts brick home in Dundee.  It’s a small castle.  Eight bedrooms, four bathrooms, kitchen, dining room, the booth, the computer room, the DDR room (don’t ask), the creepy room (I said, don’t ask) and the boiler room.  The boiler room is where I hang out with our water heater and our Peerless Cast Iron whole-house boiler.  It’s a space that’s 8 ft X 14 ft.  Its also home to my desk and a few bookshelves.

Boilers are great because they’re always tucked away in the basement where they burn like a blast-furnace.  Bertha (my name for our Peerless unit) ignites on cold winter mornings, bossed to life by the thermostat on the main floor.  The sound is a deep whooosh capped off by a polite explosion.  “Nice!  Bertha’s awake- everything’s going warm up in 15 minutes.”

My hope is that perryboilerroom (PBR) will become like Bertha to its reader.  Maybe not exactly where you want to be sitting when she ignites, but a source of much needed heat in an otherwise cold, lifeless space.  I don’t mean warm in a sentimental way.  Sentimental warmth comes from things like vanilla sugar candles, your pet cat warming your chair up for you or (dare I mention) a freshly filled diaper!  Try heating your house with any of those things on a Midwest winter day!  Sentimentality isn’t what boiler rooms deliver.  I want PBR to bring some heat!  Too hot to touch at its source, but just right once it bathes the innards of your cast iron radiators.

“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot.  Would that you were either cold or hot!  So because you are lukewarm, I will spit you out…”

This summer my plan is to give you some back story on my life and family.  I’ve also started a new job – details in the next post.  I’m currently recruiting sponsors for my work.  My hope is that each one will track with their investment here at PBR.  Let’s light this thing and see what happens!