The AC Guide

They are constantly talking about the uncomfortable indoor air, the drafts, and the tepid and cold patches that they experience

Does anybody else get particularly stressed out during the month of November? For some reason, I have several recollections of this month of being particularly anxiety inducing for me. I guess it’s difficult because the weather is beginning to change and I never quite know what to expect. Every week seems like it could be the last round of nice weather before winter season starts to settle in. This puts a lot of pressure on every single thing that I do. I feel like I need to be outside enjoying the bright Sunshine, sizzling air, and decreasing humidity before the horrors of winter season fully engulf the area. I’m not excited at the idea of using my central heating system in the form of my forced air heating system for the foreseeable future. I also don’t appreciate shaking in my boots because of the frigid air that has around me everyday. The worst part is, I beginning thinking about the upcoming holidays. I don’t particularly appreciate having my family over at my household so they can mess with my belongings and my central Heating and A/C system. Every year it seems like my family members show up with the sole purpose of messing with my control unit. They are constantly talking about the uncomfortable indoor air, the drafts, and the tepid and cold patches that they experience. As a result, they harass my smart control unit and drive up my energy bills to extreme degrees. As if I wasn’t already distraught enough about winter, my heater, and my ability to pay high energy bills… My family makes the whole cold air season as stressful as possible.

ductwork

I’m actually not the sort of man who enjoys running errands.

If I can stay at cabin all morning uninterrupted to get my work done I am perfectly glad.

I don’t appreciate feeling like I need to pack up, put on clothes, and get myself out the door for any identifiable reason. This is one of the main reasons why I am a committed online shopper and I care about to work remotely. I can get everything done on the ipad and life basically takes care of itself. Unluckyly, sporadically even I forget important tasks that require me to leave the house! For instance, I forgot that I needed to worry more about my indoor air quality this weekend than usual. Since I’m properly the only man in the household I don’t pay much attention to the central heating, cooling, and air quality control system. I put my smart control unit on the eco temperature setting and leave it there as much as possible. However, this weekend I’m having an important household guest… my new guy is coming to visit. Unluckyly, with this extra human in the household my temperature settings are not acceptable, but particularly, when we are talking about sleeping comfortably at evening. It turns out, having another body in your bed makes things rather warm. After our first evening together, I was a tepid mess separate from the high powered A/C that my pal and I blatantly needed. That tepid situation is the last thing I want to endure again… but I totally forgot about the indoor air complication until now. Looks like I need to run out and buy a commercial-powered fan before he arrives.

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Sometimes I guess that my youngsters suppose I am truly stupid.

I know that my pal and I have grown up in odd generations so they are naturally skilled in areas that I struggle with, but generally, they know how to operate a iPhone or ipad better than I ever could.

I realize that this makes them suppose that I am clueless and every section of life, especially the shenanigans that you pull as a teenager. They must guess that I never went through that period in my own lifetime so they can really fool me with all of their adolescent hooliganry. Actually, I often know exactly what they are up to when they are trying to deceive me. I just let it happen because I can benefit at the same time. This was entirely the case last yearwith my indoor air handling devices. I came cabin from work and noticed it at the household smelled much fresher and cleaner than before. It seems like our indoor air quality had somehow acquired a major improvement while I was out of the house, but when I asked my family what was going on with the indoor air quality, my son cheerfully chimed in that he had taken care of the air filter and even scrubbed some of the air ducts while I was gone. My son has never been one to take initiative, especially when it comes to his Heating and A/C chores. At that moment I knew exactly what was going on, but I waited until his bad report card arrived in the mail to mention the connection between the Heating and A/C system and his attempt at avoiding upcoming punishment.

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I have no idea what it is about my core group of friends and I, but I swear we’re connected by the same cosmic energy.

If one person feels extremely low and unmotivated, it’s guaranteed that we’re all feeling that way.

If one member has a really great week, we all feel like we’re walking on air. Unfortunately, if one of us is struck with bad luck, it’s almost a no-brainer that we’re all going to experience the same misfortune. That’s why I really shouldn’t have been surprised last month, when one by one we all reported having a slight variation on the same general problem; our HVAC systems. It started when my friend Alicia told me that her entire heating system wouldn’t turn on one morning because their heat had still not switched over. She was chilly, but they made it through the mild winter days. Next, my good friend in Kentucky told me that her car’s furnace stopped working one morning, so she had to drive to work blind in the frosty outdoor air. It was maybe two days before our good pal Beau begrudgingly told us that his own radiator had malfunctioned at his apartment. He was without heat during a cold snap of midwest winter, and had to set up a dozen space heaters to keep his cats alive that weekend. Well, it should have come at absolutely no surprise to me when I woke up the other morning and my whole house was freezing cold. I could see my breath as I exclaimed loud dissatisfaction. Sure enough, when I walked down the hall to the thermostat, the central heating system had powered off at least 12 hours before.

Dual fuel system

I went to the thermostat and reset all the controls to my exact temperature preferences, basking in my freedom.

I have a real bone to pick with my job these days. They have really dropped the hammer on people working from home, and it has put me in quite a salty mood. Here, I was under the impression that I could do my data entry work from home, and instead they are insistent that I sit in this uncomfortable office with a million distractions all day long. I really enjoy working from the comfort of my own home, and I am one of those people who can’t get the same level of productivity accomplished from an unnatural environment. The harsh fluorescent lighting of the office, along with the terrible air temperature control, absolutely kills me. Every day I’m hot or cold in there, and there’s some sort of strange smell emanating from the air ducts it seems. I can’t stand it in there and I work as fast as I can to reach fresh air again. The other day, however, I approached work a little differently and made a huge discovery about the HVAC system. I got to work super late in the evening, and found that the whole office was empty and the HVAC system was turned off. I went to the thermostat and reset all the controls to my exact temperature preferences, basking in my freedom. I didn’t expect much from the air temperature control system, but soon enough, my little office was ideally heated and the air felt fresh. There were no weird smells and the temperature didn’t fluctuate wildly throughout my shift. This poor heating and cooling system works just fine – it’s my coworkers that make the place so miserable.
Heating and cooling service

There are some things in early life that can either make or break you. For instance, having unstable parents as a small child will lead to a plethora of problems down the road in most cases. Similarly, having a super well adapted mom and extensive supportive family members might just lead to giving you a huge leg up later on in life. That’s how it has been for me, anyways, thanks to my excellent mom and her father, especially. My mom was great at teaching me how to be financially responsible and stretch my buck. My grandpa was very handy and knew how almost everything in the house worked. Thanks to him, I do too. He’s saved me thousands in my lifetime – heck, almost $1200 just last month when my AC system broke down. It was ungodly hot out that week – well over 90 degrees every day with insane humidity, and of course, my whole cooling system crapped the bed. I knew that I couldn’t afford to call out a professional HVAC technician during this heat stroke; surely they were charging and upscaled fee for their emergency services. With this in mind, I called up all the lessons that grandad taught me out in the yard, hunched over the old central AC unit. He told me how the compressor and motor needed to be delicately cleaned and cared for. He taught me the dangers of freon. And he walked me through the process of cleaning and inspecting my own air ducts for damages. With his wisdom on my side, I managed to repair my own cooling system. It only took a few days and a few extra trips to the hardware store.

electric fireplace

It’s a pretty bleak outlook when everyone you know is highly educated, independently brilliant, and somehow working 3 mediocre jobs trying to get by.

• This is the curse of my generation, I suppose, and we’re all in this together to some extent.

That being said, I’m really tired of this particular curse already, and I have a long time in the working world ahead of me. At this point, I work a full time job and two part time gigs just trying to support myself – literally just trying to keep warm through the winter. These days, my third job is actually serving to pay off my ungodly energy bills every month, because lord knows I can’t afford to live in a well insulated house with a working HVAC system. Instead, I reside in a tiny little ramshackle home, a solid 45 minute commute from the city, and barely make enough cash to pay for rent and my monthly utilities. The heating and cooling system, alone, takes well over 20% of my check many months. Think about that – the cost of keeping a one bedroom house warm through the winter and relatively cool through the summer is a fifth of my income. I’ve tried having the landlord inspect the HVAC system, because clearly there is a major issue with the efficiency of the heating and cooling equipment, if not the air ductwork itself. However, this grumpy old man just thinks I’m a groaning and moaning millennial with no leg to stand on. I can tell you, if my energy expenditure doesn’t improve, soon I really won’t have an arm or a leg.

 

New heating

Ice cold

Well, things sure are feeling hot and heavy right now. Hot, in the fact that there is a lot of steam passing around between my family members, and heavy in the way that my stomach feels every time I get another harassing message from my mother. You see, this year for the first time, my significant other and I are not travelling to see our respective family members in their far-off locations. My family resides 700 miles north in the brutal cold and snow of the midwest. My boyfriend’s family lives in the opposite direction, 600 miles south in the heat and humidity of Florida. We reside somewhere in between, torn between the two battling teams. This year instead of trying to please everyone and killing ourselves, we decided to just stay put in our new house together. I knew that the decision wouldn’t be accepted warmly, but I didn’t know that everyone would get so hot under the collar. My family was immediately bribing, with my mother telling me that the freezing air temperature wouldn’t be so awful this year because she had recently upgraded her furnace. The central heat actually works this year, she exclaimed! Surely, we want to come up and inspect her brand new smart thermostat and forced air furnace! My boyfriend’s family, on the other hand, has been nothing but cold. Rather than bragging about their indoor temperature control measures, they’ve totally frozen us out. Ice cold. Neither situation is ideal, but I know that our relaxed plans, heightened indoor comfort, and outdoor air temperature is going to make up for all the family heat.

 

 

hvac professional

I swear to god, my grandmother is one of the most demanding and entitled humans alive.

She is always insisting that people drop everything and attend to her every whim; not because she’s too old to be capable, but simply because that’s who she’s always been.

Her entire life has been managed by other people looking out for her, and without my grandpa around, she counts entirely on my mother and her other daughters. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Even when she packs up and moves to Florida to endure the cold winters, no one is free from her reign of terror. In fact, she actually managed to make it worse from a distance this year! Apparently my Aunt made the mistake of having a smart thermostat installed in my grandma’s house last year. My grandma was always complaining that she didn’t know if the house was okay or the heat was staying on, so my Aunt decided to give her the means to monitor the indoor air quality from 1000 miles away. Unfortunately, my grandma doesn’t have much else to keep her busy when she’s out lounging in the Florida sun each winter. This means, she wound up using the smart thermostat app on her phone roughly 10 times a day. She consistently monitored the air temperature in her house up north and modified the furnace settings to compensate for perceived air quality changes. Fast forward to two weeks into her seasonal trip, and her old furnace was broken down. Not only did the smart thermostat create even more obsessive material for my grandma, but my mom had to go handle the professional HVAC appointment and installation of a whole new central heating system without so much as a “thanks.”

furnace/heater service