Back in Out with the old… I introduced the “Expensive Home Maintenance” Tag to hopefully stay away from the “Air Conditioning” tag. Look, BOTH come back today…

Or actually, I think it did so on Saturday, as we didn’t have any heat downstairs when we came back from Thanksgiving visiting (and framing – Photo Exhibit UP! ).

In the manner of the petri dish, William had been sick over Thanksgiving. He passed it on to me Friday, with full effects coming Saturday afternoon to Sunday. I stayed upstairs, mainly in bed. That system was working fine. Somewhere over the weekend, Jeff told me that she thought there might be a problem. Eventually, that made it through the haze of drugs into my brain.

HVAC vendor 1 called.

Monday night, we have confirmation. Heat exchanger cracked. It was 13 years old, and a Tempstar. Replacement parts didn’t seem to be:

1. Affordable
2. Available
3. Intelligent.

It’s not like I didn’t JUST replace the upstairs Air conditioning… , and it’s not like we haven’t been fighting to repair the AC section of this unit the last … 5 years.

So….

It’s gone. And we’ve got a new system now, with a lovely Warranty. 5 days of low 50′s downstairs was enough.

I’m beginning to wonder what is left.

AC units. Done.

Hot Water heater. Done.

Garbage Disposal. Done.

Garage Door Opener. Done.

I’m not even going to touch on when these tags are going to be reused. It’s a bad jinx.

But, ignoring some broken branches (Better than a foot in the ceiling!), I’ve got to say that if anyone needs HVAC services in Franklin/Nashville, I’ve got a good recommendation to give. It’s not the original vendor, although I can’t really say they were bad. It’s just that Vendor number 2 was better. I’d still call the other if one of them was too slammed. I think that’s part of what happened with Vendor 1.

Recommended by word of mouth, from neighbors. It’s a heck of lot better than the yellow pages.

Or the Internet.

Forget the ‘history’ where they say they didn’t have it. Baloney. It’s impossible to live in the south without Air Conditioning. Simple, yet true. Hurts when it’s true. Ignore the pre-electricity days. Ignore the concept on compressible gases and expansion cooling. I tell you, they had it. They may have had to sacrifice some efficiency (I’m guessing 1800 AC units had a SEER rating of .0000001), but it’s simply not possible to live in the Southern United States without AC.

So anyways…We did hire a company to replace our existing (broken) upstairs unit. They’ve been here all day. 90% of that time was spent redoing all of the duct work in the attic. And boy, it was a mess. And still is. But it’s getting better.

Aside from the foot shaped hole in the ceiling.

Yes, they’ve only been working for 10+ hours straight. Yes, it’s been in an attic. Ripping out someone else’s mistakes and making it better.

But really, a foot through the ceiling is uncalled for.

Ok, back to reality. Dude was REAL upset about it. He’s pretty much in an apprentice state, learning from the main guy. Both are doing a ton of work, and he slipped off the joyce, toe went through, and well, look above. To coin a phrase, sh*t happens. As long as it’s fixed, that’s cool. They are sending someone out tomorrow to fix it. So everything SHOULD be ok.

The Ductwork re-imaging seems to be doing a better job. There is definitely more air flow than before, and they haven’t started to work the dampers yet to balance it out. I’m hopeful.

I’ve created a tag for Air Conditioning on this blog. I REALLY hope that it doesn’t get much more use.