Monday 6 June 2011

the a/c saga

Before we ever left England, where we had no air conditioning (at home or in the car) and the temps never get above the 80's, we talked about not having A/C when we moved back home. Bob insisted on buying a place with central heat and air, but I worked on him about not using it.

As you know, we ended up buying his Grandma's house. It has central heat and air, manufactured in 1993 (for those of you who are old, or math challenged, that's 18 years ago). We used the heat some this Fall, but we soon realized that it didn't actually get warm. So we turned it off and used the wood stove, which got plenty warm.

Then Summer rolled around. Tomorrow, for example, the forecast is a high of 93*F (34*C) with 53% humidity (and that humidity is pretty low compared to the last week). We suffered through for a while, with windows and ceiling fans and frequent showers. The problem was with our bedroom. The window, which faces West, doesn't stay open and has no screen so we didn't want to prop it open anyway. We bought a new fan for the living room, and it makes a nice breeze. So we went to Lowes and bought another new fan for our bedroom. Got it up last night, and it worked for a while and then started surging. It would go faster, and then slower. And we were still hot.

So today I thought maybe we should try the central A/C, just to see. Before leaving for church we closed all the windows and unblocked the vents and turned the beast on. There was a rattle clink, and it shut off. See, the return duct had been uncovered for a while and someone had thrown something down there. It seemed we were out of luck.

After church we went to Lowes again and bought a window unit A/C for our room. Took it home and started putting it together but didn't get finished before PM church. On a whim, Bob turned on the central unit again, and it came on fine. So we gave it a trial this evening. When we got home, it was nice and cool inside. The time of suffering is over for now; we will run the A/C at least until we get the next electric bill. ;-) The window unit will be useful in our new bedroom, which was an add-on and isn't ducted with the rest of the house.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

So what was wrong with the new fan that surged? jcr

MamaOlive said...

I really don't know. We haven't had a chance to look at it thoroughly yet.

Wil said...

Marline and I went without A/C *or* central heat during our last 12 months in Seminole, since somehow our neighbor's cigarette smoke came through our vents.

It was very difficult, especially since I was running batch-processes in Photoshop, which really heats up the computer. I thought the tower was going to blow a few times.

(Now, I just don't think we could do it... Still, we keep the thermostat on as high a temp as we can stand, which seems to be saving us a bit of money.)

Anonymous said...

It has been in the mid to upper 90s here this week and I'm glad for air conditioning. I know we *could* live without it, but life is much more comfortable with! Hope your electric bill isn't too high so that you can continue to be comfortable. mums