Our AC Adventure

We finally have our AC back! Hooray!  I forgot what a 76 degree house feels like.  As I was whining about how frustrating this last week has been, God reminded me of how fortunate I am.  On the front page of the paper was an article about people here in town who can't afford to have AC and how they cope in this heat wave without air conditioning.  It made me feel bad for being so whiny and realize there are people out there who are worse off.  That being said, now I'm going to whine and share my story.

As I said on my last post our air conditioning went out last Wednesday morning, we spent the day at my parents' house (me & Jordan at the ER) and the AC people came out around 3:30.  Here is what they told us:  "Your blower motor is broken and you have a rare, 1 horsepower motor.  Most people have a 1/2 horsepower in residential homes.  Normally we have these motors on our truck or at the shop.  We don't keep those in stock since it's so rarely seen in homes.  It has to be ordered."  Lucky us!  We have a rare part in our air conditioner that no one else has!  Then they told us it would be 2 days to get it (probably on Friday).  In the meantime they gave us a "temporary" solution.  There is some switch on the motor that can change speed from low-med-high.  It of course is on high, but they switched it to medium and got it to blow cool air.  But on medium the air moves slower over the coils and doesn't blow as hard.  We discovered that the air also only blew out of a few select vents.  They said it was better than nothing and should keep us cool until Friday.  But he said we had to keep an eye on it because it could stop working again and if it stopped blowing air and we didn't turn it off, then it would burn up the motor in the outside unit and we would have to replace the whole thing!  So here's how our week went with this temporary solution:

Wednesday evening and night, the air did get down to 80 but never got lower than that and by morning it wasn't blowing air anymore and we had to turn it off.  He had told us that we could turn it off, let it rest, then then turn it back on and it might work again.  So on Thursday we had a dentist appt, gymnastics and several other errands to run.  So we didn't have to be in the house much that day.  When we got home, the temp was close to 90.  I turned the air back on and it started blowing again on our "temporary" solution.  This time the air didn't go below 83 at night.  It was miserable and once again (this time in the middle of the night), it stopped blowing and we had to turn it off again.

I called Mom on Friday morning when I tried to turn the air back on again and we had a power surge and lost power for about a minute.  I told her we were packing up to come over and to spend the night because I didn't want to take a chance turning it back on again.  Our part was supposed to be in on Friday so I called when they didn't call me and got the run around from them the whole afternoon.  First they said the part had been ordered and they couldn't find it.  Then they had to trace down it's location.  Once they found it, then told us they wouldn't be able to get out that day to put it in.  They could come out Saturday morning or first thing Monday morning.  "Monday morning!", I whined like a little baby.  "NO, you need to come out here Saturday morn."  So she said they would be out at 8:00 AM.

So Scot went to go meet them at 8 am on Sat. morn, but they didn't show up until 9:00.  Then the guy working on it tells Scot, "This motor is not working for some reason."  So he took the old motor and the new motor back to their shop to see what was wrong and try to fix it.  In the meantime, Scot sat up in our house with no air and the temp inside had gotten up to 92 degrees.  They finally figured out that our motor was apparently dropped by someone at the factory or en route to the AC people so that's why it wouldn't work (Lucky us!).  So he put either the old motor or the messed up new one back in and said he rigged it to work "temporarily".  Basically it was the same "temporary" solution as before.  It would only cool the house to about 83 and run for about 12-14 hours before it stopped running and had to be cut off.  But he made it sound like it would cool down to normal temperatures this time.

So we packed up our stuff and went home.  We swam in the backyard all afternoon waiting for it to cool down and then ate dinner and after dinner when it still wasn't below 83, we figured it was doing the same thing as before.  So we went ahead and slept at home, went to church the next morning, and then I said, "This is for the birds." and we packed up again and went back to Mom and Dad's again planning this time to just stay over there until the new motor came in (which was going to be Tuesday).

So Sunday through Tuesday we stayed at my parents' house and spent some quality time together and the AC finally got fixed on Tuesday (yesterday) and is now back down to normal temps.  I tried to decide what lessons I should learn from this.  I definitely appreciate my AC more.  I decided I am a whiny baby and was setting a bad example for my children.  I should give thanks in all circumstances.  I should appreciate and help out my parents more.  They were very gracious and loving and let us take over their house as if it were our own.  I helped out around the house while we were there and thought, "I should do this more often."  I also should find a way to reach out more to others and see how I can help people who don't have these common amenities that so many of us enjoy and take for granted.  Well, if you haven't stopped reading before now out of boredom, thanks for reading!  Hope your AC doesn't break this summer.