Where is “Here”? or the Epic of the Pellet furnace that moonwalks

Chapter 1: A Bump in the Road

Two years ago

The lightning outside seemed to shake the very foundation of the house. Jerry and Shawn both jumped at the sound, but tried to play off their reactions cooly. Truth was, they were jumpy without the lightning to grate on their nerves. Doug wasn't as jumpy, he just seemed beaten, the inspector was here to see Smile House, and from experience, Doug knew they would get through this unscathed.
Taking a long drag on his 20^th or 21^st cigarette, the inspector started talking. Even though his back was to the three of them, they could hear the evil grin on his face as he said, "You need another building for the furnace because this house is owned by an organization."
The plan had been to put the gas furnace into the basement of Smile House. A new building would cost thousands of dollars and delay operations for months and everything was already behind schedule.
"Is there any way that we could have the heater in the basement here? We want to open this house to help children. A new building will cost so much." All three men tried to reason with the inspector without betraying the trembling of fear and anger they felt inside.
Turning to them slowly, and his voice echoing off the concrete walls, he said, "You will never finish this house." Lightning once again shook the house, overpowered only by the maniacal laughter of the inspector. Doug broke down in a weeping heap.
Ok, maybe it didn't happen exactly like that, I don't really know exactly how it happened because I wasn't there. But about two years ago, the plan was to install a gas furnace in the basement of Smile House, it was supposed to cost around $25,000 and take a few weeks to set up. Then, Manna found out that to have a gas furnace in the house, they would have to build a small building outside of Smile House to hold the furnace. It was a glitch, but September of 2010, we built the furnace building and were ready to install the heater in 2011. That was until we got the price tag. Because the city wouldn't let us use their gas line, we had to use a high pressure line that ran across the street from Smile House, which meant we needed a pressure reducer thingy (well, that's the literal translation from Russian). Altogether, the bid for installation came in at about 45 thousand dollars. A bit more that Manna was prepared to shell out. So we started looking for different options.

Rudy keeps an eye out for those who might stop the construction of the furnace building.

As it turned out we were allowed to install either a wood furnace or a pellet furnace in the basement. It was a wonderful discovery, or so it seemed.

Chapter 2: Plan B

Late October 2011

We found smaller wood stoves (around 50kW) easily enough, including a used one from a Christian camp an hour north of Kiev. They wouldn't be able to heat the whole house once it got cold, and it would be a lot of work, but it would be easy to install and a cheap way to get through the winter.
The pellet stoves that were in the country were either smaller than 100kW or German made (read very expensive). But we found a company that shipped in pellet furnaces from Poland and we could get 100kW. So Doug went in to talk to the salesman.
"How long will it take for you to get a furnace here?"
"I can have it here in three weeks."
Doug was a little dubious, this is Ukraine and we were trying to order a furnace in the last month before winter started. These things never happened that smoothly. So Doug asked another question. "How long did the last one you ordered take to get here?"
"Forty days." Not ideal, and not the most promising.
The same week we found an 80kW heater here in Kiev, that was a little cheaper, but not quite as powerful.
Some of us thought that we should get the 80kW burner because it was here, and it would work for one winter and next year we would install the gas furnace and it could supplement the pellet furnace since after researching the issue, it seems that pellets would actually be a cheaper way to heat the house each year.
But the decision was made to order the pellet furnace from Poland. I think there was a lot of lightning that day as well.
And so we put half of the money down, signed a contract that if the furnace wasn't at Smile house within 30 working days, we'd get a discount. Every one shook hands, it seemed all good, and we settled back to wait for 3 weeks. When the house got cold we turned on some propane heaters and kept working.

Chapter 3: Where is Here?

November 17^th

"He said the furnace is here." Doug told me as he picked us up to he, ad out for another day of work. But then he continued, "But I don't know if that means it's here in Kiev, here in Ukraine or at the border of Ukraine waiting to cross the border."
"Thanks for being such a pessimist, Doug." I thought to myself. "When did he say it will be at Smile House?" I asked.
"Zaftra." Doug replied sardonically.  Zaftra means tomorrow in theory, but Janna and I have quickly been learning that zaftra rarely means tomorrow. It usually means whenever I feel like it, and probably within the next year. But we went ahead and enlarged the door opening to the basement so that when the furnace showed up (tomorrow) we would be ready for it.
It didn't show up that week.
The next week we took off for Poland because of our visas. We joked about stopping by the factory and picking up our own furnace. But the word was still," the furnace is here, it will be there tomorrow." I was actually optimistic that we would get back to Ukraine the next week and find a nice warm house waiting for us.
No dice. So the next week Doug and I went to the shipping warehouse to try and get our heater. It wasn't there. It was in a different city.
Doug started hounding the salesman as only a New Englander can do. "Where is my heater? How is Harkiv here? Why did you tell us to cut out the door in our building if the furnace wasn't here?"
Slowly we learned that the other heater had the wrong set up, so we could have it, but our pipes would be jumbled. And, finally in the first week of December, we learned that the furnace never shipped, the salesman messed up, though he blamed it on the factory. It was still in Poland. One day it was in Helm, which is close to the border, which prompted no shortage of jokes about the Heater from Helm, and it ought to be great at heating up a house if it spent time in Hel - m.
But the next day we learned that it was still in the factory. It never shipped.
So let's review, it was in Kiev in the middle of November, and over the next three weeks our heater somehow magically went from Kiev to Harkiv, to Helm, to the factory. It progressively went further and further from its destination.
So we were in December, in Ukraine, without a heater. The next week we bought a wood furnace, cheap but decent so we could start heating that big concrete house. It was installed on the 10^th of December and we ordered a load of wood to make it through the next few days before the pellet furnace showed up.
And then we ordered another small load of wood.
And another, and another. Its more expensive when you order small loads, but we didn't want to be stuck with an excess of wood when the pellet furnace showed up.

The wood stove blazing away

Chapter 4: Pellet furnace arrives

Oh, wait. That hasn't happened yet.

Here we are on the 8^th of January with no gas furnace, no pellet furnace, and only one wood stove that will only be able to heat one floor of the house once it gets really cold (assuming we continue getting wet wood since we don't have a good selection at this point).  The story is still that the furnace should be here tomorrow, er ... zaftra, whatever that means.  Doug is meeting with the salesmen again tomorrow. At this point, contractually we are only supposed to pay 70% of the original cost, so Doug doesn't think he will be motivated to get us the heater at all right now, and even asked us if we still wanted it.
OF COURSE WE WANT IT! Why else would we keep pestering you for over a month?
Doug says the moral of all this is "You never order something that isn't already in Ukraine if you really need it, because you could be waiting forever. And you may end up paying so much more than you bargain for just to get it across the border."

But for those of you who may have been worried, we aren't freezing, we just have to wake up every 3 hours and feed the beast.

Update on January 9th: We just got an email from the factory in Poland, according to them, the furnace just shipped today, its not in Ukraine, but according to them it does exist now.

Further update, January 20th:  Still no furnace.  In fact we can't purchase the furnace (if it ever really arrives) because of some new import/export laws.  Doug and Alfred really hope that we can get the $6000 down payment back, and right now we are looking for another heater that has the capacity to heat the house. The options so far aren't looking promising.  No one has pellet furnaces, and even if they did, prices all over Ukraine have gone up since October/November.
    And so we're still feeding the beast, and waiting for the time when this story becomes funny.
The End
... Just Kidding!
The Furnace actually showed up on January 27th.  Two months late. 
We had given up on it, we couldn't buy it from the company.  And it wouldn't ever actually show up.  Those were certainties.  But that's the things about certainties here in Ukraine.  They aren't.  And so we got the heater the day before the temperature dropped down to -15.  Slava Boga (Praise God)!   We have a heater ... that works.