Weather Too Hot: I must be a mad dog

Boffer, Is your A/C working again? I don't think you did a follow-up except to say the technician was coming out the same day you called.

Thank goodness it was just my clothes dry that fritzed and not the A/C. I can use the clothes line instead of laying on a bed of ice. Ken really liked the photo. The compost cage is two feet from the clothes line (told you guys the back yard is small). If I had started a new pile I wouldn't even be able to use the lines.

TC, This would be your really busy season if you were still in the business.

TCgardening wrote:Boffer, I love the dog picture! Sorry to hear about the A/C. I was a A/C tech for many years, funny how some people wouldn't open their windows for fear of thieves or allergies and they were in gated communities. Their houses were way hotter than the outdoor temps, never understood them.

The fewer real problems a person has, the more time and energy they have to exaggerate and obsess on the ones they do have and to invent imaginary ones.

I've talked to many people living in incredibly safe neighborhoods who feel besieged and to people who have no real worries who tell me they don't know how they survived something utterly commonplace or even trivial.

sanderson wrote:Boffer,  Is your A/C working again?  I don't think you did a follow-up except to say the technician was coming out the same day you called.

Short version:

The tech showed up as scheduled.  By the time he was done, it was nearly 90° in the house at 3pm., so it took a few hours to get it cooled down, but I got to sleep in a cool bed.  Whew!

TCgardening wrote:...I was a A/C tech for many years...

Oh good...I can be nerdie for minute!

My concern was correct: at the moment there's a 3-4 day waiting list for home A/C service.  It's fairly common for their commercial accounts to get priority.  Especially those meat lockers containing $40-50,000 worth of beef.  But as I said above, I lucked out, the tech was here within hours, and there was a very good chance that I wouldn't have to sleep on the recliner in my man cave in my shop that stays cooler than my house without A/C.  My wife is out of town, or it really would have been doomsday, because she deals with the heat more poorly than I.

I was outside at 6:30 am troubleshooting the heat pump, and determined it was probably the compressor motor start cap.  It was an oddball size in my experience, 60/7.5 uf, which left out jury-rigging something with a spare  cap I had on hand for my well pump.  I doubted I would be able to find one locally in a hurry, so getting professional service seemed to be the expedient thing to do.  

I told the service manager what I suspected the problem was, and he agreed that it was an oddball size.  The tech swung by the parts house to pick one up on his way here.  They were out of that size!  However, they had available a 'universal' cap, something that I hadn't heard of.   The tech showed up, agreed with my diagnosis, but also found another issue in the thermostat controls that I wouldn't have been able to find, so I knew I made the right choice calling in the pros.

The direct replacement cap would have cost $30-40.  The universal cap was $165!   The parts house knows they've got ya by the short hairs, and show no mercy!

T/C, from a consumer's standpoint, over the years I've found that there is a dire need for qualified HVAC techs.  I think it would be a great career for someone who's not college bound.  Having worked in the field, do you think the same?

HVAC, Plumbing, and Electrical contractors are all three great fields for technically-inclined people.

I think the problem with numbers is that so many of these techies would rather become computer programmers.  They don't have to wash their hands as often.

I have recently discovered that there is a real need for landscapers that can build specialty gardens for homes, schools, churches/synagogues/temples, and in neighborhood parks and specialty co-ops.  With the population exploding here, it seems like every remaining piece of flat land now has some form of garden, and most were designed and built by someone other than the residents of the properties.

We have one little company making beautifully, artistic raised beds and large wooden enclosures.  Some of these gardens are obviously Square-foot inspired, maybe actual SFG.

I loved this one garden at a school where the beds were built up to look like math symbols--a plus sign, an X, an Asterisk, a zero, and one area that looked like it was enclosed in parentheses.

I bet this profession would be very low stress, fun, and profitable for folks that are still young enough and limber enough to do it.

My huskies would have loved this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1zY1dp1_ig

Cute video.