Don't Sweat Air Conditioner Problems

I'm rerunning my blog about hot weather from several years ago because, honestly, it's too hot to write.

  

We had an unusually cool spring, but we noticed a problem during the first heat wave of the year: Our big window air conditioner blew air just fine, but that air wasn't conditioned.

I don't know when the problem actually begun. These things are always found at the worst possible time, like when your furnace breaks down during a blizzard, or your sewer backs up during colonoscopy prep.

And I can't complain, because the air conditioner came with the house--which I bought 35 years ago. In fact, we did an internet search for the model, Sears Coldspot, and learned they stopped making it in the 70s. Our air conditioner survived over forty Indiana summers, and that's remarkable.

I was still in my teens when that thing was made! I wish I'd held up nearly as well.

One final indignity: The box for the new air conditioner ended up on the old air conditioner.

My house doesn't have central air, or central anything. I suppose we could pump cold water through the hot water radiators and cool the house that way, but ... say, maybe that's something to try. Although the furnace is also over forty years old, so best leave well enough alone.

The air conditioner was set into a window, at one corner of the house, but the thing was huge. It was powerful enough to cool the entire downstairs, as long as you set up three fans to blow the air from room to room, in a windy circle that ended with the kitchen air being pumped right back to the conditioner. If you set it up just right, walking through a room can feel like being Jim Cantore reporting for The Weather Channel.

The upstairs is on its own. We bought a small unit for the bedroom, and left the smaller room upstairs to swelter in the summer. In the winter, the smaller room is used as a backup fridge. Old house problems.

When the downstairs air conditioner, which had its own electrical shutoff and a special plug, stopped cooling the house, Emily went outside and laid her hand against the side of it. Then she came back inside and placed her hand in a stream of cold water until the burning stopped.

At least a fire would have taken care of that ugly wallpaper.

Yes, there was definitely something wrong, of the "play Taps at its grave" variety.

Anyone who knows my history will not be surprised to learn I saved up for the next big home repair job. After that, it was a simple process of taking the old air conditioner out and replacing it.

It's usually when the word "simple" appears that we run into trouble.

The old unit had been permanently installed in that #@%& window. It had been screwed, hammered, molded, glued, foam-sprayed, and caulked into place. It was as if in addition to stopping air leaks, they wanted to stop burglaries, alien invasions, and Godzilla.

Eventually we freed it, using two screwdrivers, a hammer, chisel, crowbar, power saw, and two sticks of dynamite. (Luckily it was close enough to Independence Day that nobody noticed the noise.) Preparing to install the new air conditioner, I tried to raise the window further.

The window wouldn't raise. It wouldn't raise because it had been installed at the same time as the air conditioner, and was fitted to its exact specifications.

The new unit did not, of course, meet those specifications. But you knew that.

That wrapping on top of the new air conditioner contains ... a remote control. Unless both my legs are broken, I have no idea when I'd use it.

Keep in mind that Emily and I were doing this work on a day when the temperature was 88 degrees (at 6 p.m.) and the humidity was 107%. How this is possible I don't know, but after an hour we looked like we'd stepped into a shower fully clothed. Oddly enough, the dog didn't seem at all bothered by this--if anything, he seemed happy to have a new window to look out of.

When we finished, I left the pried out metal, the hunks of insulation and piles of screws, the broken drill bits, right where they fell, and simply taped over the areas the new unit didn't cover. Then I tried to plug it in.

Which wouldn't work. The new unit didn't have a special plug.

Some things you should check first. Luckily, there was a more normal plug a few feet on the other side; we turned the new unit on and went out to get a pizza while it was working.

No way were we cooking inside that house. I mean, any more than we already had.

A Conservative Lawn Mower

While I was mowing the lawn a few years ago, oil started spurting out all over (from the mower, not me). Investigation revealed the oil did not come from an opening oil should come out of. No, it was a brand new opening.

Going back still another year, while I pushed that that very same mower, the handle suddenly dissolved into numerous pieces. They scattered across the lawn in a pattern that spelled out “Ha!” I found what I thought was one of those pieces still on the mower deck, and picked it up. The pattern of that bolt, which -- it turned out -- was actually from the engine, is imprinted to this day on the palm of my hand.

No connection could be established between that red-hot doohickey and the auto-dismembering handle, but what are the odds?

The worst day mowing is still better than the best day snow blowing. But it's coming, soon enough.

The lawn mower before that lost its life when I pulled the handle to start it, but failed to notice the rope didn’t retreat back into the machine, where it belonged. Then I mowed over the rope. It wasn’t pretty. My father eventually took that mower to his Home for Mistreated Machines (established in my honor), where it happily whacked away for years more, without a care. (In other words, without me.)

The one before that is the Infamous Exploding Lawnmower, which caused the first ever Level One Hazardous Material Emergency in the history of Noble County, and was featured on both CNN and “The Simpson’s”. The parts that could be located are on display in the Smithsonian, after being borrowed by an investigation team from the History Channel program, “Engineering Disasters”.

What I’m saying is, I have a history.

After the most recent lawn mower sacrificed its lifeblood (still visible in a dead patch of  grass that spells out “help me”), a friend let me borrow his. I know – dumb friend!

Ironically, the mower ran just fine under my borrowship. It was a freakin’ miracle.

Then my friend gave me the mower, maybe assuming it was tainted. He wasn't wrong.

 

Oh yeah, and this happened. Those wheels are supposed to go in the same direction.

 

My mowers never screw up the same way twice. One time it's the starter rope; another time a cracked head (not unlike the one I got from a low hanging branch); then it’ll be sheets of flame and a towering mushroom cloud.

So I’m mowing the lawn the day after the mower officially became mine, and it stops. Just stops, after once around the lawn. I manage to get it started. Once around, it stops again. After some effort, including changing the gas, oil and sparkplug, and some imaginative praying, I get it going again. Once around, it stops.

Changing fluids is the extent of my capabilities. Yes, I can change the sparkplug, but that task once led to me regaining consciousness on top of the neighbor's car. But eventually, a realization hit me:

When the mower leaned toward the right, it kept running. When it leaned toward the left, it stopped. Every time.

I had a conservative lawn mower.

 

Okay, but how do I go the other way?

Luckily, very little of my lawn is level; in fact, there’s every indication the entire property is sliding downhill. The US Geological Service estimated that within the next hundred years my house will be west of the old car wash on the next block, which is bad because right now it’s east of the car wash. The same team that handled the Leaning Tower of Pizza is working on the problem.

But my lawn can't wait a hundred years, so my solution was simple: Keep the mower’s right side pointed downhill at all times.

I gotta tell you, that’s nowhere near as easy as I thought it might be:

* Sooner or later, you’ve got to turn around. Otherwise, the neighbors will get annoyed.

* When you back up, you can’t watch both the mower and the dog droppings.

* Slipping while pulling a lawnmower toward you is the closest thing you can get to an instant of sheer terror without being in a plane crash.

* Pulling a lawn mower toward you is dumb.

This was a genius way to torture me. I possessed a mower that was perfectly capable of mowing, as long as it’s tilted in one direction. Why replace it? That’s money I could use for other things, like utility bills, food, or crutches. Besides, this is Indiana – I’m surprised there aren’t more right leaning lawn mowers. So I spent the next few years wearing out one side of my shoes.

Sometimes I think my lawn can’t slide away soon enough.

 

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Remember, if you don't stop to read, your lawn mower might inspire the next disaster movie.

 

Tree Procrastination Brings Blossoms

 My fourteen regular readers might remember that a couple of years ago I realized some kind of trees were growing up in the middle of our lilac bushes. I had to decide, quickly, whether to remove the trees, transplant the lilacs, or have my back yard declared a nature preserve and let the government worry about it.

If you read my blog from April--of this year--you already know that I reacted the way I often do when faced with difficult decisions: I ignore them and hope they go away.

But maybe that's for the best, because this spring the trees I almost cut down were spectacular.

One of them is apparently a cherry tree:

 

We base this on the fact that last fall it had cherries growing from it. Can't get nothin' by me.

The other is, possibly, a crabapple tree:

I don't know ... I think I'm crabby enough, without the tree. You should hear it bark.

The lilacs?

The bushes are smaller and I had to clear a lot of dead wood out even before the invading trees showed up, but the lilacs that remain seem to be doing well. We're considering some transplanting work. I'll ... you know ... get around to it.

Before you blame me for not acting sooner, if I had we wouldn't have been able to enjoy some really beautiful spring blossoms:

How did they get there? The same way we end up at car washes: bird poop.

There are three things we really need more of in the world: beauty (real beauty, not that Hollywood crap), peace, and real chocolate with no calories.

I just thought of four other things, so maybe I should just leave it here.

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Remember, every time you don't buy a book, a leaf falls from a tree. You autumn readers should be ashamed.