The Heater Replacement Fund is a fund I am trying to raise money for that will help me to replace the broken heating system in my parent’s house.

The house has a fuel oil heater installed in it, and the heating system began malfunctioning last year, finally failing entirely. Since then my mom and I have attempted to get the heating system repaired or replaced, our latest effort having been to set aside money that was to go toward getting the heating system replaced before winter set in.

I was forced to put those funds toward the costs associated with my mom’s funeral, leaving me and my dad with only the kitchen oven and a small electric heater to keep our home warm.

The heating system in this house is a forced air furnace system, where the water from the water heater flows into a radiator mounted in the heater box, then air is forced through the radiator to heat the air which is then distributed throughout the house via heating ducts.

Installed in 1997 when the house was built, the system has reached a point where age has caught up with the parts and it no longer works properly. Me and my mom had planned to try and replace the fuel oil water heater with an electric water heater, which would offer the same function of filling the radiator in the heating system with hot water, but would hopefully be less expensive to run than a fuel oil powered heater.

Currently the cost for number one diesel, the kind used in home heating systems, is approximately $4.50 a gallon in Alaska, and the 300 gallon tank in the yard would need to be filled three times in an average winter to make it through the winter. That would be a cost of approximately $4,050.00 just for the fuel to run the heater, then add on $300 to $600 for the cost of repairing or replacing the burning unit on the water heater and it only made sense to me and my mom to try replacing the water heater with an electric one instead.

I have no idea what the cost would be for replacing the water heater with an electric one. We had managed to set aside $2,500 for replacement costs, with anything that might have been left over earmarked to go to help pay for fixing the brakes on my mom’s car (long story that one). The suddenness of my mother’s death left us completely unprepared for dealing with funeral expenses, and she had no life insurance (envelope is sitting on her nightstand where we were going to be reading on life insurance and getting her some, but we were too late getting to that). As a result of these events, the money that had been set aside for replacement of the heating system had to instead be spent for funeral costs, leaving me at a loss for how to fix the heating system in the house as we enter the cold winter months here in Alaska.

If it were possible, I would simply move my dad out of this state, or at least this house. That is not an option, however, because of a reverse mortgage on the house that would come due in full if my father spends more than 60 days out of a year not living in this house.

And that is why I have set up a fund for anyone that might want to help me out on raising the needed money to get the heating system in this house replaced.