A/C Restored

In my last post I described the failure of my air conditioner. So I feel I should assure my readers that the one-week heat wave did not kill me and the a/c has been restored.

I bought an LG brand a/c. Some reviews said the LG unit was loud, and indeed it is somewhat noisier than my old GE unit. It also weighs less. Some of the parts, such as fans, are plastic instead of metal. The compressor is half the size of the compressor on the old GE unit.

A friend who lives near me, and his son and grandson, came to my house and installed the new unit. Actually, they began the installation: they carried the old unit to the back of my yard and put the new unit into the window opening. (The old unit was gone within 36 hours—picked up by a recycler.) Although the new a/c, like the old a/c, has side curtains designed to seal off the remainder of the window opening, they are nowhere near sufficient. So my friend returned the next day and we cut boards to fit into the side openings and caulked them and painted them, then we used joint compound to repair the inside of the window opening where winter air leaking in for years had destroyed some of the plaster.

The new LG has a remote control so I can operate the a/c without walking over to it. I guess that is progress of a sort, although I never considered walking across the room to be a terrible burden.

So my house baked in upper-90s heat while it was without a/c, but now that the a/c is restored, the temperature hasn’t gotten high enough to need an a/c. Today, for example, the high temperature was 77°. This is similar to the way the city’s tornado sirens operate. Sometimes in bad weather the city blows a tornado siren 100 feet from my house. The siren is loud enough to make you jump out of your skin. But it works. Every time that siren blows, the tornadoes stay away. The principle seems to be universal. I keep something I never need for 20 years and then one day I toss it out; the next day I need it. I pay $600 for an air conditioner and the outside temperature drops 20 degrees. I don’t know about you, but that’s the way the Universe has always worked for me.