Tag: Window Units

  • Planning Home Projects

    General Update – The car got fixed, you know, from yesterday. It was the engine thermostat that needed to be replaced. Cost over $1,200 to get it fixed. But the car is back, and all is well in the Universe.

    The other thing that happened yesterday was that the air conditioner that we ordered arrived a day early. See, this winter, we got rid of the a/c unit that was in the kid’s room – it was over six years old, and had seen better days. The plan here is to move the unit in the livingroom (6,000 btu) into the kids room, and replace it with a larger and more powerful (8,000 btu) unit. 6k btu might be overkill in the kid’s room, but it just wasn’t cutting it in the livingroom. (Also, the end of March is a great time to buy an a/c as they are all on sale, to move out last year’s inventory for the new in prep for Summer.) BUT, before all of this installing can happen in both rooms, we need to repaint the windows and trim, so everything will be matching, and the apartment looks a little more unified.

    I say all of this because, as I was hauling the unbelievable heavy a/c unit up three flights of stairs, I was excited for all of the home improvement projects we have. You know of the a/c and window project. Then there is redoing our “mudroom” area by the front door, and replacing the livingroom ceiling fan. There is the touchup painting in our bedroom, and hopefully coming up with a better closet situation. The biggest project of them all is working on the kid’s room. It reflects the interests of an eight-year-old, and not the aspirations of a soon to be teenager. Not sure how to accomplish that, nor what budget for it will be, but I know that it’s important to the kid, so it’s important to me.

    I say all of this because what it really means is that we are coming out of Winter. We can open the windows again, and let the breeze blow through. There is a wonderful peace and tranquility that comes from this time of year. It is fleeting though. Soon, it will be too hot and steamy in the City, and the windows will close up and the a/c’s will roar on. If it’s a good year, we’ll have a comfortable Spring until early June. If it’s a bad year, we’ll be locking up in May.

  • The Dance of the Air Conditioners

    When God? When Lord, will we be able to take our air conditioners out of our apartment?

    This is the prayer I say around this time of year. Fall is so tantalizingly close, but still we need our air conditioners. I just want these clunky, environment destroying, comfortability creating machines out of our home! They run up our electricity bill, make the apartment feel unnaturally cool, and block the use of widows.

    Like most people up here in the Northeast, we have a home that doesn’t contain central air conditioning. We have a window unit in the kid’s room, and a stand-alone unit that takes up an awkward position in the living room, like a house guest that won’t leave. Though our apartment is great in winter, as it retains heat very well, this place is an oven in the Summer. No matter how we try to vent and fan this place, the air in here remains warm, and never leaves. In fact, we have a dead zone at the dining table where it will continually stays two to five degrees warmer than the rest of the place.

    Usually around Memorial Day or the first week in June, we head out to storage and pick up our two a/c units. We play the game of, “Will Dad Throw Out His Back,” sometimes accompanied with the question, “Is That a Hernia?” The wife does help me as we do have to carry these units up two flights of stairs. It is a chore no one wants to do, but we know we have to do it to survive the Summer.

    In fact, the wife did her first Summer in the apartment with no a/c. This is before I showed up, so I didn’t experience it, but oh the stories that woman can tell of the heat. Never again will this apartment not have a/c in the Summer, she swore!

    Then around this time of year, mid to late September, after the weather has settled to an average daily high in the mid 70’s, we do the dance again, back to storage with the units. Going down the stairs with heavy objects is much easier and fun. It sort of is like the first activity of Fall for us; next comes apple picking and pumpkin carving.

    The lead up to removing the a/c’s this year has been rather excruciating. See, at the end of August, we took a vacation up to northern Maine, staying in a cabin on the side of a mountain. It was pretty there, as I am sure you can imagine, but what was the most thrilling for us old people was that we had the windows open, day and night, with the breeze coming in. You had to put a sweater on at night. That’s right! A sweater in August, which is a thrill for a guy who grew up in Texas, and the word August is synonymous with 100-degree heat. So, what I am looking forward to is opening up windows and putting on a sweater.

    As I sit here on my couch, with the a/c blowing, I am writing this post while waiting on a cool front to come through. Hopefully, by the end of today, we will have windows open. The sweater might still be a reach, but here’s to hoping.

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