My Old House

Greetings All !

Well, I’m hoping the long, sordid saga of our air conditioning unit has finally come to an end. That’s the good news.

The bad news is what it cost me!

As you may recall, we’ve had two major problems with regards to air conditioining since buying this house.:

1) The second floor gets too hot.
2) We knew the outside unit was aging and may not last another year.

Well, #1 has effectively been cleared up, not by installing a second air conditioner… but by a remarkably low-tech method: vent management.

If I keep a particular vent closed on the first floor, there’s enough cold air pressure going up to our bedroom to keep that important room cool. The second floor bathroom already had good cold air flow. And two other bedrooms build up cool air if you just keep the doors closed. That leaves the bedroom that acts as my home office. It gets a bit warm, but I’m generally not up there during the heat of the day, so… no big deal !

Problem #1 is effectively solved!

Now, with #2, we had McIntosh Heating and Cooling (of Independence) replace the motor on the outdoor unit early this year. I understand why the darned thing locked-up; we have a minor gutter problem where water from a second floor gutter falls directly onto that unit. So the fact that it rusted up shouldn’t have been a surprise. In retrospect, I should have covered our A/C during the winter!

OK, speed up to this past weekend. We had just come home from vacation. In our absense, I had set the A/C to 76 degrees (which is really 79… a simple mercury thermometer shows that our digital thermostat is “off” by three degrees all the time).

When we walked in the door after our vacation, I instantly knew that the house was too warm ! The outdoor unit was spinning and blowing. The inside fan was blowing. But it was just a bit too warm. Now, outside, a very-welcome cold-front had just moved through. So, I simply shut off the A/C, opened several windows, and vowed to test the A/C before it became very hot again.

A few days later, we turned on the A/C. It blew constantly for three hours. The temperature inside our living room actually went UP one degree.

I called McIntosh Heating and Cooling. I told them that I needed them to come out, but that I also had to be at the hospital most of the day. I said I could get home within 15 minutes, however. The nice receptionist said she understood and said that they’d call me with a 15 minute warning on their arrival.

Well, later that morning, while I was at the hospital, my cell phone rang and yes, they were giving me the 15 minute warning.

Got home, met the repairman (whose name I believe was “Chris”). After about 20 minutes or so of looking at the unit, he apologized to me for the news he was about to tell me: The compressor was shot. It would turn on and apparently spike up to twice the number of amps it was rated for, and then die. He said (and here’s where I KNEW I was entering expensive territory) that he’d have to turn me over to Roger, their salesman !! (Roger’s the boss too, I think.)

Now, Roger gave us two options: a 10 SEER unit for $1400 installed… or a 12 SEER unit for $2200 installed. I pointed out that we had a coil in the furnace that was less than a year old. (I’d actually phoned this info in to his receptionist late yesterday.) Would that lower the price any? He said he’d already taken that info into account. Without that, his quotes to me would have been $500 higher, he said !

I talked with my wife and we agreed upon the 12 SEER unit. Roger gave me some brand choices and we settled on American Standard.

Roger said he could probably have the new unit installed by late the next day. That sounded good enough, though I was dreading the 90-plus-degree forecast for the next day.

Thursday… the day of the big install!

Roger calls me at about 8 AM and says his guys will be arriving with the new unit somewhere between 11 AM and 1 PM.

At 11 AM, Roger calls to say his guys are stopping off for lunch and would then by coming to the house.

11:30 AM — Two gentlemen from McIntosh arrive with the new unit. They spent the next several hours installing and testing the new unit. They were very polite and friendly. Of course, it was over 90 degrees outside at this point and our grand-baby arrived shortly before the installers did; so things in the house were warming up and our grand-baby was becoming restless.

By 3 PM, they were finished with installing and testing the unit. When they gave me the documentation that came with the A/C, I was surprised to see that it was a 13- SEER Unit !!

This pleased me quite a bit, as I had the sneaky feeling I was pretty much getting gouged a little bit on the price… but I wasn’t sure. The fact that McIntosh gave me a more efficient unit than initially promised really made me feel a bit better about how much the overall long-term cost would be. Maybe I’m just an idiot for not shopping around for a different quotes for a few days. But my wife gave me enough grief during those hot hours while the guys were installing the new A/C . And she’d had an AWFUL night’s sleep the night before. So, what was my choice ? Lose a few hundred dollars in extra profit (maybe… again, it might have been a very good quote)… or get grief and give grief to my family ?

Well, anyways… $2200 later and we got our A/C. The house is nice and cool again! And of course, the weekend forecast is now for cooler weather !! FIGURES !!

With God’s blessings, maybe I won’t have any more A/C problems until I’m 50 !!