This time it's not the stupidity, it's just the heat
Earlier this year I disappeared briefly while my air conditioner was out of commission because I really didn't feel like talking when I was miserable. Well, now it is later in the year and even hotter and we went for round two.
Like a lot of central heat and air units, my furnace and my air conditioner use the same blower. The blower was out of balance and it rattled a lot. Friday night this fan came to a complete stop and I could smell the motor trying to burn out. Using emergency engineer repair method number one (I kicked it) I got it running again for that night, but we quickly called someone out the next day to look at it.
Saturday afternoon a repairman came by and told me my entire furnance was a disaster. The blower, the furnance, the ductwork, and everything. It was all a potential fire hazard and he advised to try to get what was there working again rather than order parts because, well, parts aren't going to help any more. He said it was going to die ugly very soon. He found the problem with why the fan was rattling and fixed it. It turned out to be a broken bracket and he drilled a new hole to get it running again. That evening my A/C ran quieter than it has in ages. All was well and good until about 3 o'clock in the morning when it set itself on fire.
My wife started coughing during the night and got up to take some cough syrup. She smelled smoke and found the blower motor on fire downstairs. She killed the power and ran back up to get me. I woke up and ran downstairs to help douse the flame. Fortunately, it had already went out. But that means that my house now effectively has no central heat and air.
Over the course of the years I have been helping add ceiling fans to this house and now all the bedrooms (3) have ceiling fans and so does the dining room and the family room. Five ceiling fans total, only two original with the house, and two box fans. That was all the cooling power I had today when I woke up and I tried to milk it for all it was work. Unfortunately, it was 90 degrees outside and despite everything I tried the temperature continued to climb.
I began trying to research for little window A/C unit to put in so that we would have a little extra cooling power for the house. I was checking out the web sites of places like Wal-Mart, Circuit City, Best Buy, Target, Lowes, and Home Depot. I was looking for an A/C unit between $80 and $100 to help us survive the hottest days of an already hot summer until we could get the central unit fixed. I had no idea how long it would take but I knew we could not last long like this. Monday's forcast was calling for temperatures between 96 and 100.
As I was browsing I was thinking about what I would do once the central unit was fixed. I decided that I would probably just sell the used unit on Craigslist and recover some of my expenses and get rid of the pesky thing. It was such an obvious idea, I realized, probably lots of people came to the same conclusion. I brought up Craigslist and did a quick search.
Long story short, I hit two different people and managed to buy three diffent units for a sum total $165. Two of them are a piddly 5,000 BTUs. One is a meager 8,000. Individually they might keep the house only uncomfortably warm. Together we are hoping to make it comfy especially since I still have 5 ceiling fans and two box fans to help direct cold air traffic. Originally the idea was just to buy one and try to make it a few days and then choke on the expensive repair. The new plan is that if this works then we are going to hold off on the repair until we can save away a bit more to afford it. After all, we have space heaters for the winter as well. This may not become a major problem for a few months.
All three have been churning away for just over two hours now and the house feels, eh, comfy. Comfy enough for me to go to sleep, at the very least. With luck this buys us time until after our family vacation next month.
The best part of this is the look in my wife's eyes. My wife is a very intelligent woman. Very beautiful too. For all her intelligence, she is often surprised by the fact that I often will find very simple solutions to very big problems she is facing. Solutions that, in retrospect, were pretty obvious. Last night at 3 AM she knew she was looking towards several days of misery and couldn't think of a good solution other than a speedy repair of the central heat and air and we didn't want to do that right now. Today, for about the price of a good small A/C window unit, we have three gracing our house. All through the magic of seeing if someone else thinks up the same dumb ideas that I do.
Got to love that internet.
Like a lot of central heat and air units, my furnace and my air conditioner use the same blower. The blower was out of balance and it rattled a lot. Friday night this fan came to a complete stop and I could smell the motor trying to burn out. Using emergency engineer repair method number one (I kicked it) I got it running again for that night, but we quickly called someone out the next day to look at it.
Saturday afternoon a repairman came by and told me my entire furnance was a disaster. The blower, the furnance, the ductwork, and everything. It was all a potential fire hazard and he advised to try to get what was there working again rather than order parts because, well, parts aren't going to help any more. He said it was going to die ugly very soon. He found the problem with why the fan was rattling and fixed it. It turned out to be a broken bracket and he drilled a new hole to get it running again. That evening my A/C ran quieter than it has in ages. All was well and good until about 3 o'clock in the morning when it set itself on fire.
My wife started coughing during the night and got up to take some cough syrup. She smelled smoke and found the blower motor on fire downstairs. She killed the power and ran back up to get me. I woke up and ran downstairs to help douse the flame. Fortunately, it had already went out. But that means that my house now effectively has no central heat and air.
Over the course of the years I have been helping add ceiling fans to this house and now all the bedrooms (3) have ceiling fans and so does the dining room and the family room. Five ceiling fans total, only two original with the house, and two box fans. That was all the cooling power I had today when I woke up and I tried to milk it for all it was work. Unfortunately, it was 90 degrees outside and despite everything I tried the temperature continued to climb.
I began trying to research for little window A/C unit to put in so that we would have a little extra cooling power for the house. I was checking out the web sites of places like Wal-Mart, Circuit City, Best Buy, Target, Lowes, and Home Depot. I was looking for an A/C unit between $80 and $100 to help us survive the hottest days of an already hot summer until we could get the central unit fixed. I had no idea how long it would take but I knew we could not last long like this. Monday's forcast was calling for temperatures between 96 and 100.
As I was browsing I was thinking about what I would do once the central unit was fixed. I decided that I would probably just sell the used unit on Craigslist and recover some of my expenses and get rid of the pesky thing. It was such an obvious idea, I realized, probably lots of people came to the same conclusion. I brought up Craigslist and did a quick search.
Long story short, I hit two different people and managed to buy three diffent units for a sum total $165. Two of them are a piddly 5,000 BTUs. One is a meager 8,000. Individually they might keep the house only uncomfortably warm. Together we are hoping to make it comfy especially since I still have 5 ceiling fans and two box fans to help direct cold air traffic. Originally the idea was just to buy one and try to make it a few days and then choke on the expensive repair. The new plan is that if this works then we are going to hold off on the repair until we can save away a bit more to afford it. After all, we have space heaters for the winter as well. This may not become a major problem for a few months.
All three have been churning away for just over two hours now and the house feels, eh, comfy. Comfy enough for me to go to sleep, at the very least. With luck this buys us time until after our family vacation next month.
The best part of this is the look in my wife's eyes. My wife is a very intelligent woman. Very beautiful too. For all her intelligence, she is often surprised by the fact that I often will find very simple solutions to very big problems she is facing. Solutions that, in retrospect, were pretty obvious. Last night at 3 AM she knew she was looking towards several days of misery and couldn't think of a good solution other than a speedy repair of the central heat and air and we didn't want to do that right now. Today, for about the price of a good small A/C window unit, we have three gracing our house. All through the magic of seeing if someone else thinks up the same dumb ideas that I do.
Got to love that internet.