I want to be cool!

From the De to the Ba to the C - L - E....... can you say Debacle?.... Let's use debacle in a sentence.....

I think our air conditioning debacle is resolved enough to finally share, let's hope so.

We basically live in a rental.... it's more complicated than that, but that's enough information for this story... The home is equipped with a swamp cooler that was brand new right after the seagull miracle, give or take a day or two. We moved in right before last summer and spent the summer watching the matting on our hung photographs warp from the stank humid air. Even after refurbishing the unit with new parts, hoses, and filters, it still smelled like a crusty fish tank everywhere in the house. We weren't very excited to have the same experience twice, and when we figured out how pregnant Kristen would be in the middle of the summer we knew we would find an alternative. We knew there was no reason for the property owners to want to replace the relic, so we had no problem just buying something new on our own. Central air being what we are used to, but not in our price range, and having no desire to get another swamp cooler we figured some window mounted air conditioners would be the ticket.

We researched BTUs and square footage, combined our findings with price point and brand reputation and bought two nice units at Lowes along with supporting bracket systems. The supports were designed to be screwed into a setup very different than what we found on the house as I started to prepare to mount them. The biggest problem being that we live in a brick home, and the wood I was supposed to screw into was actually a strip of hollow metal about an inch above decorative brick that isn't even grouted all the way. Not wanting to risk a heavy air conditioner ripping off hunks of brick work and falling on whoever was near the window, I broke character and asked for some advice from various people who you would think would have had experience and suggestions....

Having grossly overestimated the helpfulness of my contacts we stared at the beautiful unopened boxes for a week while trying to decide what to do.... They were a convenient place to set mail and groceries as one came in from the car... We returned the units to Lowes and spent what two of them cost on one high end portable unit from Sears, again after much research and debate.... no installation needed. Done, right?

The unit worked fine, not awesome, but good enough. Two weeks after purchasing the unit and having fans strategically placed around the house to blow what little "coolness" there was around, we were awoke in the middle of the night by some sort of horrible crashing noise that only registered as "very wrong" in the middle of my REM cycle... After I was able to breathe again we went roaming for the source of the noise. We found the portable unit mysteriously off, not the way we left it. So I turned it back on and waited, and it worked fine... right up until the time I got comfortable in bed again, this time it was a serious of crashing noises much louder than the first single crash. I ran to the unit and ripped the plug out of the wall.

Opening up the exhaust tube I was welcomed by a waterfall of little shiny black pieces of plastic in an array of broken sizes that appear to have come from some unknown piece ripping through the interior fan and getting blown out the tube.

We went to Sears who apologized and gave us an even trade on a new one.. If I hadn't crushed my pinky, had the thing leak into my back seat and had my lack of upper body strength underlined, I would say that the exchange process was nice and smooth.

We took the new unit home, got it all set up, re-hooked up exhaust fans and tubes and the little window unit thing that the tube hooks into, and it started to work just fine... until around midnight, and the crash bang was no longer surprising, just really maddening. Sure enough, within 7 hours from hooking up the new one it did the same thing. All you do with the unit is plug it in and turn it on.... there is nothing I could do right or wrong to cause this...

So we got on the phone the next day and found a company who deals with window units, they sent over their "comfort advisor" (not a salesman, a comfort advisor) who came over the next evening, took some measurements and assured us he could hook us up with an installed window unit, even with a trickier than normal install. I took the second portable unit back to Sears to get a refund...and to their credit that went smooth once I explained why a cash refund to use to go spend somewhere else would be much better than VISA eventually crediting us back.

We didn't hear back from the comfort advisor until about the third or fourth phone call, who then informed us that all of their suppliers were out of window units, except for the really expensive ones, like REALLY expensive ones.... So we then went to Costco, bought a unit, called back the comfort advisor and scheduled them to just do the install...

As of this morning the latest unit is firmly anchored onto the house, is producing more coolness than either of the portables, and we are praying for no horrible crashing noises scaring us half to death in the middle of the night.

5th time is the charm, isn't that the saying?

Sunday we were on our regularly schedule trip to visit Kisten's grandpa who is in a nursing home (or something close to it). This time he asked us if we got the swamp cooler all hooked up for the summer. I gave Kristen a quick look and we both quickly nodded and said yep, we sure do, yep yep. I'm sure if I would've explained the situation the suggested solution would have included the words duct tape.

My grandfather has a similar love of the stuff, but he also has a thing for coating everything that has ever rusted or may eventually rust again with silver rustoleum spray paint; tools, antiques, parts of his truck....you name it.

If they had tried to help us the north side of the house would be coated in tape and never rust...