Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

It has been a busy week at work. Since this is only the second time Jeremy has been here I am not sure if it is just that it seems like I am working more because he is here or if it just also happens to be that we have been really busy lately.

I heard through the grapevine that some folks have been wondering where my posts were.

Honestly, for the most part nothing really exciting has been happening here.

It has been pretty hot here. The heat index has been up over 100 the last couple of days. I guess that is noteworthy.

I am thinking that we are probably going to need to see about replacing the central air conditioning unit at the house here this year.

So far the performance of the AC unit has not been really what I would be hoping for.

I need to find out the exact pricing of of it all, but from what I have been able to gather on the Internet, it is probably going to cost about $4500.

While, this is a BIG number. It is an investment in the house. For several reasons.

#1. Energy Efficiency
Last year's electric bill for cooling the house during the REALLY bad months was over $300. Given that the AC unit is about 20 years old, I would definitely wager that we would seem an unbelievable amount of energy efficiency improvement out of a new unit.

#2. Good money after bad.
The cost of servicing this unit would probably just be a waste of money. In part because that money could go towards a new AC unit. Not to mention the fact that since the current unit is so old, it would no doubt experience a breakdown while under continuous load this summer.

#3. Tax Credits
The government is giving up to a $500 tax credit for the purchase and installation of an energy efficient AC system.

#4. Resale value
The house will eventually be sold and that price will be higher with a newer AC unit notably because of #1 & #2 in the list. No homeowner (in Texas especially) wants to have the AC go out on them during a heat wave.

I can tell you is that the AC unit has been running since we got home at about 1:30 today and has not brought the temperature down at all in the house. The temperature has not gone up any, but it has not gone down.

I don't want to know what it will be like when the temperature is about 15 degrees higher.

I will keep you posted on what I find.

Ben

Well, not completely. But being a homeowner is quite a tiresome bore and hassle sometimes.

Roof repair, new floors, plumbing repairs, air conditioners, etc.

Well this time around, the Dryer has died. Well not completely but it definitely has reached a point where you question on whether or not to try to get it repaired. I got the Dryer with the house, which I think really means that they decided it wasn't worth taking it with them. It is a gas dryer, which I can see is not something I would normally ahve bought. The price of natural gas honeslty isn't very effective down here in the Tejas. The price of natural gas has basically doubled in the last year, while the price of electricity here has only increased in about 25%.

Well, the last week or so it has been making a lot of noise. I mean a lot of noise. Thinking it was starting to die, Gina and I started pricing dryers. However, the last two days of it's life the dryer was getting louder. The death rattle I guess. We originally determined that the noise was related to the drum and that the bearings or the rollers it sits on.

It died while I was running the dryer last night. The load I had run wasn't quite dry, so I started it back up. Almost instantly I smelled gas. This meant that the repair was no longer a simple repalcement of bearings or rollers, it meant that something related to the "blower wheel" was now broken. So I unplugged the dryer and washer and turned off the gas at the wall. It was a little after 11:00 at this point, I stayed up for another 30 minutes or so to make sure that there wasn't a leak. (Didn't want to not wake up, since the AC intake it right outside the laundry room.)

All of this means that the Dryer that I got with the house about 6 years ago has served it's purpose quite well. I need to find the actual age of the dryer, but I believe it to be circa 1988-1992. In any case, it has definitely had a good long run and it is time for a new one.

I am currently at Casa De Rynes (my boss' house) and we have been watching the HBO special about Katrina, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, it is pretty moving. To a certain point I feel sort of whiny about the issues with my AC, or my roof, or leaky plumbing, or my dryer.

I should have posted earlier about this, but I have been busy with work and with the new server. But the new server is online, yup online. As it turns out the port they had plugged it into on the ethernet switch was bad. So I had configured it as required, I was begining to doubt my technical prowess for a minute.

I best wrap up this blog entry as the tequilla is hitting me hard. Before I go, I will throw out that we are planning to get an electric dryer and yes we have a 220 plug there in the laundr room. I might need to get a gas technician to cap off the wall plug, just to ensure that there isn't an issue, maybe in the future natural gas will be cheaper.

Just a quick note before I go and pass out for the night.

I got home and the temp on the thermostat was 78 of a requested 74.

I just about freaked, fearful that the AC was on the fritz again. (I just changed the air filter a couple of days ago, approx 30 days since last time, trying to be good about it now.)

Well I went out and looked at the outside unit, there was a little condensation on the coil, so I went inside and shut off the AC and ran just the fan for like 40 minutes. (I really need to shut it down for like 3 hours, from what I read on the net.) Maybe I will do that while I sleep.

So today it was a high of like 104. I am going to chalk the high temp when I got home up to the fact that it was just unbelievably hot outside.

I also put the remote thermometer into the vent in the living room, same as last time. (entry)

I let it get up to about 85 degrees before turning the AC back on. In about 10 minutes it was blowing a chilly 68.

I remembered that the last time the AC guys were here they clocked it at blowing 56, so that had me a little concerned. But on that same note, the outside temp that night was in the 80s, it was like 97 outside (97 @ 7:30 at night).

So then I hit the internet to answer the question of:
"How cold should my central air be blowing?"

Apparently the answer is that it should be blowing about 18-22 degrees lower than the outside temp. So 97 degrees outside and 68 inside, that would mean that my AC is blowing ok.

And if it was 104 outside that means the AC would be blowing like 75. But that would assume a constant cooling factor, with the sun blaring down that would heat up the house more than after the sun went down, which would account for the house reaching 78.

So I am not as freaked out.

Well I am almost done configuring the server that will soon host this blog and many others.

Laterz

And "they" are very right.

Gina and I are back at home finally. We have been away from the house for like 3 weeks. The dogs were very excited to see us, almost as excited as Gina was to see them.

I had a brief scare when I looked at the thermostat. It read 78 but the request was 75. We had a scare right before we left. I had been choking the AC system. I had forgotten to change the air filter for quite some time.

Anyway, I shut the system off for about 20 minutes while I went and opened up the outside unit, the same way the AC repairman had done last week. I saw a little bit of wetness on this one piece (i will have to look it up and find out what it is specifically) but not as much as had been there previous week. He had said the wetness comes from ice forming on the coil, which is a sign of the system being under too much pressure.

When they were finishing up they read the temperature of the air coming out of the vents using one of these...
.

Anyway, the guy last week had borrowed a small wire brush to clean off the outside unit from a TON of dust. So when i opened it up and saw that only a small piece of the system had been cleaned off, I went and got the brush and cleaned off the rest of that area. I think I will need to take a better look at it tomorrow morning and clean the rest.

Anyway, since I don't have one of those fancy guns, I got out the ladder and inserted my remote meat thermometer into grate.

It started out reading a wonderfully cool 72 degrees and has slowly lowered itself down to about 64 degrees. So I am fairly certain that the AC is working and cooling the house. However, I am afraid that the AC is being hampered.

When they were here they put in about 3 lbs of freon as they said it was down that much. When they had left the AC was blowing a comfortable 56 degrees. Course that was at like 10pm.

I recently reviewed the ACC (austin community college) and they had HVAC class. Since I am pretty comfortable calling myself an Amateur Plumber, maybe I need to become an Amateur AC tech.