Yesterday, I entertained myself with a spectacularly inept effort to get the furnace-mounted humidifier up and running for the winter. I cut my fingers, flooded the cellar floor around the furnace, and learned a lot. Next year, I’ll do it correctly the first time.

The evaporator pad (aka the wick) is a thick square of rigid mesh that fits into a plastic frame that snaps into a plastic housing mounted on the furnace. Water comes from a drip-feed device above the housing and drains through a hose at the bottom of the housing to the furnace condensate pump.

The plastic frame holding the wick has a 3/8ths-inch hole on one side and a much smaller, less identifiable opening on the opposite side. There is no symbol (such as an arrow) or direction anywhere on the device to indicate how it fits into the housing.

The wick put up a hell of a fight when I started inserting it into the frame — for some time, I was sure I had bought the wrong size. I checked the manufacturer’s website and found that, yes, it was the correct wick, in the correct size, so I set about the task with far more force than I originally believed necessary. I needed a large screwdriver to cram the wick into one side of the disassembled frame, and a hammer to fit the other sides of the frame around it.

So when I went to insert the frame into the housing, I put it in upside down. It took a great deal of effort, but the struggle to get the wick into its frame had me convinced that the job would be awkward and irritating so I persevered.

After mopping the floor several times, and examining the drainage arrangement to locate the leak site, I dimly realized that the big hole on the wick frame should go on the bottom, to match the drainage hose. I had assumed that the big hole was for the drip-feeder.

Extracting the wick frame was not easy, and the big screwdriver came in handy again. I reversed the frame and it slid into place with hardly a nudge. I mopped the floor again and went to bed.

Thus passed a typical Tuesday in the life I live now. What larks, eh?