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115 degrees is damn hot. Period. End of discussion. Adding humidity to it just makes it all the worse. Yes, Atlanta and places like it are pretty miserable at 90 degrees and 80%+ humidity. Take 115 degrees and add 80%+ humidity. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Ever try to sleep in a house in the summer that’s 92 degrees with a disgusting amount of humidity? I couldn’t do it, that’s for sure!
As people who follow my blog may know, I’ve been having a lot of problems with my condo’s air conditioning. It seems to be one thing after another, and since it’s a 30+ year old heat pump, that’s not surprising. It started a couple months ago with a transformer failing that the a/c people wanted $300 to replace, my dad replaced it for about $9.
The problem that drove Russet and I up to Cloudcroft (no pun intended) early was a loose connection: the thermostat wasn’t secured to the wall. That was discovered by accident and happily remedied. At that time, Russet said that the a/c didn’t sound quite right, and I agreed with her. However, my dad never heard the problem, ignoring the fact that he’s totally deaf in one ear and hard of hearing in the other.
Well, the noise turned out to be the blower motor failing. Dad replaced it while I was in Cloudcroft on my last trip. The part was late coming, so I stayed at Russet’s an additional day (gosh, darn it all to heck!). The new fan came in Wednesday and I arrived at home that evening.
Wonderful air conditioning! At least until Sunday late morning. It died again, exhibiting characteristics akin to an overload shutdown condition that my dad had described to me. Sunday was a weird day in that I had a double birthday dinner that evening – Saturday was Michelle’s bday, Monday Audrey’s. So we had a big dinner Sunday, right between ‘em. I didn’t want dad on my roof in the heat of the day, so I waited until Sunday night to tell him. Unfortunately he was busy Monday with having to fix something at my sister’s house.
The a/c wasn’t totally dead, it would turn on 2 or 3 seconds every 15 seconds. This was actually sufficient to almost hold the temperature to a reasonable level, but in the end, it was just too bloody hot. I got to my parent’s house about 4am or so, mom had a bed ready for me.
I had already told my boss that I would be in late Monday as I needed to go to the various community colleges in town to get transcripts sent in to NMSU, so I told him that I’d be working via VPN since my a/c had failed once again. So I was covered there and expected to have a productive Monday.
That, of course, was not to be.
My parents take care of my youngest niece on occasion while my sister is at work. Right now my two older nieces are back east with their father, so there’s no one to take care of the youngest. So events conspired against me. I didn’t get much sleep Sunday night, I was spending a lot of time on the couch lying on an icepack (my neck is massively screwed up right now), and my mom had a doctor’s appointment at 1pm. She couldn’t take her granddaughter with her, and as it turned out, the neighbor who frequently does “as needed” sitting was not available.
Enter Uncle Wayne.
I was stuck at my parent’s house for an additional three hours. Still, I was able to get my high school and one college transcript taken care of. Two down, three to go. Fortunately one is four blocks from my house and the other two are close to the freeway, so I’ll be able to take care of the remainder next week easily.
Monday night sees me once again at my parent’s, Slept acceptably, it’s been ages since I’ve spent the night on a twin-sized bed, geez, those things are small! I don’t like sleeping at my parent’s house because my brother is up all night, which means the alarm system beeps every time he goes in or out an outside door, he also has the TV on ALL THE FREAKIN’ TIME. It doesn’t matter that he’s in another room or outside, apparently he has to have background noise constantly.
This morning I have breakfast and go back to my condo to shower and dress as I hadn’t taken any work clothes with me, having not expected to spend an additional night at my parent’s. My dad is already there checking out the a/c (and taking my parking space, an acceptable sacrifice). I have a wondrously cold shower in a 92 degree condo. It’s a strange sensation squeezing out a blob of shampoo and having it warm in your hand. Get dressed, and as I’m leaving dad has fixed the air conditioning!
Turns out there was a broken wire. It had probably been previously broken and just went unnoticed. So he fixed it easily enough and theoretically I’ll have a 79 degree condo when I get home tonight.
In Phoenix in the summer, sometimes you can survive without air conditioning. The nights will frequently get down to the low 80s, and with good fans, that’s bearable for some and I can handle that. But right now we’re in the monsoon season, we’ve officially had storms and power outages. That means nights in the upper 80s or lower 90s and monster humidity, rendering fan cooling and swamp/evaporative coolers useless.
We should canonize Willis Haviland Carrier.
A thought occurred to me while writing this. My heat pump is 30 years old. That’s about the same age as the technology in the space shuttle. Maybe we should send my dad to Florida to lend them a hand....
Ever try to sleep in a house in the summer that’s 92 degrees with a disgusting amount of humidity? I couldn’t do it, that’s for sure!
As people who follow my blog may know, I’ve been having a lot of problems with my condo’s air conditioning. It seems to be one thing after another, and since it’s a 30+ year old heat pump, that’s not surprising. It started a couple months ago with a transformer failing that the a/c people wanted $300 to replace, my dad replaced it for about $9.
The problem that drove Russet and I up to Cloudcroft (no pun intended) early was a loose connection: the thermostat wasn’t secured to the wall. That was discovered by accident and happily remedied. At that time, Russet said that the a/c didn’t sound quite right, and I agreed with her. However, my dad never heard the problem, ignoring the fact that he’s totally deaf in one ear and hard of hearing in the other.
Well, the noise turned out to be the blower motor failing. Dad replaced it while I was in Cloudcroft on my last trip. The part was late coming, so I stayed at Russet’s an additional day (gosh, darn it all to heck!). The new fan came in Wednesday and I arrived at home that evening.
Wonderful air conditioning! At least until Sunday late morning. It died again, exhibiting characteristics akin to an overload shutdown condition that my dad had described to me. Sunday was a weird day in that I had a double birthday dinner that evening – Saturday was Michelle’s bday, Monday Audrey’s. So we had a big dinner Sunday, right between ‘em. I didn’t want dad on my roof in the heat of the day, so I waited until Sunday night to tell him. Unfortunately he was busy Monday with having to fix something at my sister’s house.
The a/c wasn’t totally dead, it would turn on 2 or 3 seconds every 15 seconds. This was actually sufficient to almost hold the temperature to a reasonable level, but in the end, it was just too bloody hot. I got to my parent’s house about 4am or so, mom had a bed ready for me.
I had already told my boss that I would be in late Monday as I needed to go to the various community colleges in town to get transcripts sent in to NMSU, so I told him that I’d be working via VPN since my a/c had failed once again. So I was covered there and expected to have a productive Monday.
That, of course, was not to be.
My parents take care of my youngest niece on occasion while my sister is at work. Right now my two older nieces are back east with their father, so there’s no one to take care of the youngest. So events conspired against me. I didn’t get much sleep Sunday night, I was spending a lot of time on the couch lying on an icepack (my neck is massively screwed up right now), and my mom had a doctor’s appointment at 1pm. She couldn’t take her granddaughter with her, and as it turned out, the neighbor who frequently does “as needed” sitting was not available.
Enter Uncle Wayne.
I was stuck at my parent’s house for an additional three hours. Still, I was able to get my high school and one college transcript taken care of. Two down, three to go. Fortunately one is four blocks from my house and the other two are close to the freeway, so I’ll be able to take care of the remainder next week easily.
Monday night sees me once again at my parent’s, Slept acceptably, it’s been ages since I’ve spent the night on a twin-sized bed, geez, those things are small! I don’t like sleeping at my parent’s house because my brother is up all night, which means the alarm system beeps every time he goes in or out an outside door, he also has the TV on ALL THE FREAKIN’ TIME. It doesn’t matter that he’s in another room or outside, apparently he has to have background noise constantly.
This morning I have breakfast and go back to my condo to shower and dress as I hadn’t taken any work clothes with me, having not expected to spend an additional night at my parent’s. My dad is already there checking out the a/c (and taking my parking space, an acceptable sacrifice). I have a wondrously cold shower in a 92 degree condo. It’s a strange sensation squeezing out a blob of shampoo and having it warm in your hand. Get dressed, and as I’m leaving dad has fixed the air conditioning!
Turns out there was a broken wire. It had probably been previously broken and just went unnoticed. So he fixed it easily enough and theoretically I’ll have a 79 degree condo when I get home tonight.
In Phoenix in the summer, sometimes you can survive without air conditioning. The nights will frequently get down to the low 80s, and with good fans, that’s bearable for some and I can handle that. But right now we’re in the monsoon season, we’ve officially had storms and power outages. That means nights in the upper 80s or lower 90s and monster humidity, rendering fan cooling and swamp/evaporative coolers useless.
We should canonize Willis Haviland Carrier.
A thought occurred to me while writing this. My heat pump is 30 years old. That’s about the same age as the technology in the space shuttle. Maybe we should send my dad to Florida to lend them a hand....
