"I shoulda made that left turn at Albuquerque..."
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010 07:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
auntbijouIt's been a very interesting weekend.
First of all... our air conditioner stopped working. There we were, the Husbandly One and I, sitting in our bedroom chatting when... the fan sitting on a nearby crate just... stopped. I looked up at the ceiling fan and... it was still going. Never slowed down, just... kept going. Concerned that the elderly fan had at last gasped out its last wheeze, THO turned it off, and that's when we noticed that the clock was no longer working. And the computer wasn't asleep, it was off.
But... the light in the kitchen was still on.
THO thought it was a bad circuit breaker, because when we turned it back on, and turned stuff in the bedroom back on... it promptly shut off again. So, we called an electrician, but THO was suspicious that it might be something more and after investigating the A/C, he realized it wasn't working, wouldn't come on, nothing.
It was the A/C that was broken.
This was on Sunday.
Did I mention we're in the middle of a triple digit heatwave?
So, the electrician didn't call us back, but that turned out to be a good thing. We didn't need an electrician; we needed an A/C repair guy.
Who couldn't come out until Monday morning.
So, we had a very hot night. THO went and bought extra fans, I had the kids taking cool showers before bed, and we were all restless and hot. I opened all the windows, but since Muta and Calcifer have discovered they can bust out the screens to get outside, I could only open them about three inches. Still, with the ceiling fans and the box fans, it was a bearable 84 degrees (28 C) in the house by about midnight.
One odd thing we all noticed by the next day. My cough had disappeared.
I have asthma, as you all know. And it's been getting worse and worse. I've had pneumonia three times since we moved to this house, mostly over the summer. We had already noticed that when we're not using the central air or heating, my asthma calms down, but when we start using it again, it flares back up. We had suspected mold and such in the ductwork perhaps was causing my problems. And this seemed to confirm it.
Well, the A/C guys arrived as promised and found that the fan motor had burned out, as well as a capacitor thingummy, so, they replaced all of that, cleaned it all out, added freon, and started it up again. I waited for my asthma to start flaring up again... and it didn't.
It still hasn't.
Funny thing is, over the last two years or so, I've been noticing this... smell, every time our system would come on. It was almost, but not quite, like smoke, and it would burn the back of my throat, and then, the Asthma Monster would start acting up. But... nobody else could really smell it. Well, the Impertinent One could, but it didn't bother her like it did me.
That smell is totally gone.
So, something good came of it after all. And I am very happy about that, indeed!
First of all... our air conditioner stopped working. There we were, the Husbandly One and I, sitting in our bedroom chatting when... the fan sitting on a nearby crate just... stopped. I looked up at the ceiling fan and... it was still going. Never slowed down, just... kept going. Concerned that the elderly fan had at last gasped out its last wheeze, THO turned it off, and that's when we noticed that the clock was no longer working. And the computer wasn't asleep, it was off.
But... the light in the kitchen was still on.
THO thought it was a bad circuit breaker, because when we turned it back on, and turned stuff in the bedroom back on... it promptly shut off again. So, we called an electrician, but THO was suspicious that it might be something more and after investigating the A/C, he realized it wasn't working, wouldn't come on, nothing.
It was the A/C that was broken.
This was on Sunday.
Did I mention we're in the middle of a triple digit heatwave?
So, the electrician didn't call us back, but that turned out to be a good thing. We didn't need an electrician; we needed an A/C repair guy.
Who couldn't come out until Monday morning.
So, we had a very hot night. THO went and bought extra fans, I had the kids taking cool showers before bed, and we were all restless and hot. I opened all the windows, but since Muta and Calcifer have discovered they can bust out the screens to get outside, I could only open them about three inches. Still, with the ceiling fans and the box fans, it was a bearable 84 degrees (28 C) in the house by about midnight.
One odd thing we all noticed by the next day. My cough had disappeared.
I have asthma, as you all know. And it's been getting worse and worse. I've had pneumonia three times since we moved to this house, mostly over the summer. We had already noticed that when we're not using the central air or heating, my asthma calms down, but when we start using it again, it flares back up. We had suspected mold and such in the ductwork perhaps was causing my problems. And this seemed to confirm it.
Well, the A/C guys arrived as promised and found that the fan motor had burned out, as well as a capacitor thingummy, so, they replaced all of that, cleaned it all out, added freon, and started it up again. I waited for my asthma to start flaring up again... and it didn't.
It still hasn't.
Funny thing is, over the last two years or so, I've been noticing this... smell, every time our system would come on. It was almost, but not quite, like smoke, and it would burn the back of my throat, and then, the Asthma Monster would start acting up. But... nobody else could really smell it. Well, the Impertinent One could, but it didn't bother her like it did me.
That smell is totally gone.
So, something good came of it after all. And I am very happy about that, indeed!
