I grew up inside a big, almost giant housing complex in the inner city.
This city is located way up north where the Winter can be particularly brutal.
There were a number of things that we had to do without in that apartment. It was rent controlled and I was being raised by a single mom working two jobs to stay afloat. There were times we had to really tighten the belt and deal with hardships back then. But one thing we never had to worry about was the heating in the Winter. For all the things that were wrong with that giant building, they sure got the heating right. Of course, it was radiant heating and there was a giant boiler in the basement providing the source for that radiant heating. There were times it got so toasty warm in our apartment that we had to crack a window in the dead of Winter. These days, that’s all a distant memory but those times help me remember just how fortunate I am now. Living a bit further south now, I don’t have a Winter that needs a gas furnace or a boiler. I live in a house with central air conditioning and the heat pump is all we need for both heating and cooling. This thing, besides being such a revolutionary invention, is just so amazingly versatile. Aside from changing the air filter and getting HVAC maintenance in the Fall and Spring, the heat pump takes care of the rest. And all I have to do is flip the thermostat from heating to cooling or vice versa. One thing that is still guaranteed in my life is plenty of good heating in the Winter. It’s just these days, a heat pump is the source of that good heating comfort instead of a boiler.