Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1269.
Problems with the heating system.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1269.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
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This episode is a dialogue between Dan and Janice about problems with a heating system, the thing that keeps your house warm.
Let's get started.
Hello, I'm Dan.
I'm here to fix your heating system.
Oh, when I put in the service call, I didn't expect a repair person to come out the same day.
I just finished another repair in the neighborhood and the company told me to come by.
Well, the boiler hasn't worked for two months.
We used it to heat the basement.
But you just called for repairs today.
I didn't call about the boiler.
I called about our radiators.
The radiators heat the original part of the house, but we're also having problems with the furnace for our central heating system which heats the extensions.
You mean you have two different heating systems in one house?
It's an old house.
Each system was installed at a different time.
So you could have problems with more than one thermostat, heating element, fan, or set of ductwork.
I know that we should install one system for the whole house, but that would be expensive.
Is this going to cost a lot?
Well, we can't afford expensive repairs.
I guess we'll have to use these.
Space heaters.
Dan rings the doorbell, which we hear at the beginning of the dialogue.
A doorbell is something that makes noise to indicate that someone is at your door and wants you to open it.
Dan says, hello, I'm Dan.
I'm here to fix your heating system.
Dan is talking to Janice who has of course opened the door.
A heating system refers to all of the equipment and technology used to control the temperature in your house or in a building.
We sometimes talk about a heating and cooling system.
In some places it gets very hot, and so you want what is called air conditioning, which puts cool air into your house.
If it's cold, you want heating so that your house is warm.
My house just has a heating system.
I don't have a cooling system.
My cooling system is opening the windows.
In our dialogue, Dan is there to fix the heating system.
Janice says oh, when I put in the service call, I didn't expect a repair person to come out the same day.
A service call is is when someone comes to your house to fix something that is wrong.
It could be your plumbing, it could be your electricity, or in this case, your heating system.
Janice didn't expect a repair person.
A repair person or a repair man or repair woman is a person who fixes something broken in your house or perhaps in another building.
Usually, if you have an electrical or mechanical device in your house that doesn't work, such as a washer or a refrigerator, you can call a repair person to come and fix it.
That person will come out, meaning they will go to your house.
Dan says, I just finished another repair.
That is, I just fixed someone else's machine in the same neighborhood.
And the company told me to come by.
To come by means to go to someone's, in this case, house.
Dan says, The expression on the fritz F-R-I-T-Z means not working correctly or working in a way that you don't like or that is not acceptable to you.
If your television is on the fritz, it isn't working, or at least it isn't working the way you want it to work.
Janice says, well, the boiler hasn't worked for two months.
A boiler, B-O-I-L-E-R, is something that some homes and buildings have in order to provide heat.
A boiler actually heats up water.
The water turns into vapor or steam.
And that vapor or steam is sent through certain pipes or tubes that go into the house or the building that warm the surrounding air.
These pipes or tubes usually are in each room.
They are put together and called a radiator, R-A-D-I-A-T-O-R.
My house back in Minnesota when I grew up had a boiler and radiators.
It's an older system of heating houses and buildings.
The school I went to also had a very large boiler and radiators in each classroom.
Janice says the boiler in her house hasn't worked for two months.
She says, we used it to heat the basement.
A basement, B-A-S-E-M-E-N-T, is a level or floor of a building that is below the ground.
In many parts of the United States, such as in the Midwest and in the East, the houses often have basements a level below the ground.
Here in California, most houses do not have basements.
Dan is a little confused because Janice says the boiler hasn't worked for two months.
He says, but you just called for repairs today.
Janice clarifies.
She says, I didn't call about the boiler.
I called about our radiators.
I explained what radiators are, of course.
Radiators heat the original part of the house.
So it looks like or sounds like Janice has an old part of a house and a new part of her house.
She says we're also having problems with the furnace for our central heating system which heats the extension.
Another way of heating your house, more common nowadays, is through what is called a furnace.
F-U-R-N-A-C-E
A furnace is a large piece of equipment that burns wood, natural gas or oil to heat up the air that is used to heat the home.
A boiler heats water, which then becomes steam that is sent through these pipes here into the radiators which heat the air around it.
A furnace heats the air itself and then takes that air and moves it throughout the house so that the air is warm in different parts of the house.
Technically then, they are different ways of heating a house, although when I was growing up, we often referred to the boiler as the furnace, without distinguishing between the two, but there is a difference.
Janice says that the new part of her house, the extension, is heated with a furnace.
An extension.
E-X-T-E-N-S-I-O-N is a part of a house that is added after the original house is built.
Here in Los Angeles it's very common for houses to have extensions in the back because people want more room.
Janice mentions that they have a central heating system in the new part of their house.
A central heating system refers to a set of equipment that sends heat throughout the entire house.
Most houses have a central heating system, at least most large houses, where a furnace is used to heat up the air, which is then sent throughout the house to heat it up.
There are some older houses that don't have a central heating system.
They have a little heating system in every room.
I used to live in a small house that had one heater in the middle of the house and that was supposed to heat all of the rooms of the house.
So you had to keep the doors open in order to have the heat go into the different rooms.
That wasn't really a central heating system.
Central heating systems usually move the air through the house using fans that blow the air from one part of the house to the other.
In any case, Janice is having problems with the furnace in their central heating system.
She says they're having problems not only with the radiators that are part of the boiler system, but also with the furnace for the extension system.
Dan says you mean you have two different heating systems in one house?
Janice explains.
It's an old house.
Each system was installed at a different time.
To install I-N-S-T-A-L-L means to connect a new piece of equipment or to put in a new piece of equipment.
We often use this verb to install when we're talking about a piece of equipment, mechanical or electrical that is connected to something else and becomes a more or less permanent part of a house or a building.
So we might talk about installing a security camera or a set of cameras in different parts of your house.
Here we're talking about installing heating systems.
Dan says, so you could have problems with more than one thermostat, heating element, fan or set of duct work.
Dan is listing, conveniently, different parts of a heating system.
A thermostat, THC.
E-R-M-O-S-T-A-T is a small device that you use to set the temperature that you want in your house.
It's how you turn the heater on and off or turn the air conditioner on and off.
A thermostat has a thermometer, that which tells you what the temperature is inside of a room and you can change it, turning the heater on or off, depending on whether you want more or less heat.
A heating element is something that becomes hot through the use of electricity and that electricity creates heat.
Heating elements are actually not used typically in either a boiler or a furnace system.
A heating element would be used in an electric heater.
Some people have, in addition to a heating system in their houses, electric heaters that they put in individual rooms when they want just one room to be warmer than another.
Those electrical heaters have heating elements that get hot because the electricity is going through them and that creates hot air around the heating element.
A fan, F-A-N, is something that moves air.
A furnace system has hot air which is then moved by fans to different parts of the house, from the furnace to the rooms where you need the heat.
An electric heater also uses typically a fan, although not all do.
Finally, we have the word ductwork, D-U-C-T-W-O-R-K.
Ductwork refers to the tubes or passages that go from the furnace to the individual rooms of the house through which the hot air goes.
So if you walk into a house and you see, usually on the ceiling, an opening that has metal bars over it, that's probably connected to a duct.
Those ducts are... basically big tubes that are connected to the furnace.
The furnace sends the hot air through those ducts into the individual rooms.
If you see, on the other hand, metal radiators either by the floor or against the wall, that house has a boiler system.
Janice says I know that we should install one system for the whole house, but that would be expensive.
Dan says more expensive than fixing two separate systems?
Janice doesn't really answer the question.
Instead she asks another question.
Is this going to cost a lot?
Meaning, is what Dan is going to do today to fix these two systems going to cost a lot of money?
Dan says, I'm afraid so.
I'm afraid so is another way of saying, believe it or not, yes.
I'm afraid so means yes, I am sorry to say that this is true.
Janice says, well, we can't afford expensive repairs.
Expensive means costing a lot of money.
I guess we'll have to use these.
Dan says, what are those?
Janice says, space heaters.
Space heaters are what I was describing previously.
These are little machines that have heating elements in them that you plug into the wall so that the electricity heats up the heating elements and you can heat up a small area or a small room.
If you have lots of space heaters, I suppose you could heat up a big room.
We used to use space heaters all the time in my old house where we didn't have a central heating system.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Hello, I'm Dan.
I'm here to fix your heating system.
Oh, when I put in the service call, I didn't expect a repair person to come out the same day.
I just finished another repair in the neighborhood, and the company told me to come by.
How long has it been on the fritz?
Well, the boiler hasn't worked for two months.
We used it to heat the basement.
But you just called for repairs today.
I didn't call about the boiler.
I called about our radiators.
The radiators heat the original part of the house, but we're also having problems with the furnace for our central heating system which heats the extension.
You mean you have two different heating systems in one house?
It's an old house.
Each system was installed at a different time.
So you could have problems with more than one thermostat, heating element, fan, or set of ductwork.
I know that we should install one system for the whole house, but that would be expensive.
More expensive than fixing two separate systems?
Is this going to cost a lot?
I'm afraid so.
Well, we can't afford expensive repairs.
I guess we'll have to use these.
What are those?
Space heaters.
Our scriptwriter is like a repair person for your English.
She'll fix all of the problems.
If you listen to her dialogues, I speak, of course, of the wonderful Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thanks for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2016 by the Center for Educational Development.
