By Gretchen Leigh

It’s the age old question. At least it is for my husband and me. Do we or don’t we replace our 30 year old heat pump?

My husband always votes no, I always vote yes. He can’t see that the cost savings on our energy bills will outweigh the price of replacing such a large appliance. He’s a “if it’s not broke don’t fix it kind of guy.”

I’m a preventative maintenance type of woman. If we know something is past its prime, may break sooner than later, and doesn’t seem to be working correctly, why not replace it before it fails on its own? Because when something as important as a furnace/air conditioner breaks, it’s usually because we’re using it for its intended purpose. Meaning, we are going to be too hot or too cold at some point in the near future. The unit is thirty years old after all.

I get that it doesn’t seem cost saving to him. It’s thousands of dollars compared to the couple hundred it will be to have a professional come out and give it a little TLC, but my husband doesn’t pay the monthly bills. It makes me crazy to type out the number it costs for electricity/gas every month. We could be saving 20 percent by upgrading the whole shebang.

A year or so ago, our energy company began sending us a usage statement. When I receive that envelope in the mail, I know what it’s going to tell me, “You have used more than your share of energy. You are what’s wrong with our country today.” I feel like any moment now we will be thrown off the island for using 23 percent more energy than our surrounding neighbors. And that’s only in the winter. It’s 64 percent in the summer when we use air conditioning.

Our antiquated heating/cooling unit has a large carbon footprint. My husband might be OK with it, but it makes me embarrassed to think we’re hogging that much energy.

Ten years ago, I drove a big, all terrain, Suburban, family tank. Gas prices were moderate; somewhere in the high twos or low threes. It killed me to fill my gas tank. I complained to my husband, but he weighed the price of gas against buying a new vehicle.

I started having trouble with the transmission and my husband, because he’s a “if it’s not broke don’t fix it” kind of guy, didn’t believe me. He had recently worked on the transmission because it wouldn’t go into reverse, he couldn’t fathom that there could be anything else wrong with it.

Time passed, I complained, he ignored my pleas. Then the problem occurred when he was driving it, but I decided it was too little too late. He had waited too long to address my complaints. Next thing he knows, we’re at a dealership and, of course, we drove home in a new, smaller, more economical car.

However, a furnace, though cheaper than a car, is a lot harder to slip past my husband. Let’s face it; whenever you can test drive something that is better than what you already have, you’re automatically hooked. It’s human nature. Unfortunately, there are no furnace dealerships where I can lure my husband in for a test drive. He’d have to take somebody’s word for it. And we know that’s not going to happen.

So when starving children in India are upset because there is not enough cold air in their house, blame my husband. However, don’t think of this column as me throwing my husband under the bus, think of it as me throwing him under the furnace.