If It's Not One Thing, It's Another

Monday, the downstairs Air Conditioner stopped working.

Ok, Monday wasn't as hot has the weekend had been, but the 90's is still a little more than I like to hang out in.  When you go inside on a hot day, you expect the temperature to be cooler... and it was.  Just not as cool as expected.  You see, we like to run the A/C with the thermostat set at 82 degrees in the summer...  Not that I like it that warm, but my wife does;  and neither one of us like the high electric bill that is the alternative.  Anyway, the thermostat, when I read it, was reading 84.  It didn't take long to determine that the system was blowing warm.

You will remember that I mentioned that the downstairs A/C stopped working.  Well, the upstairs A/C was running... and running.  The upstairs system is a lot smaller than the main one down stairs.  It cannot cool the hole house, and while it probably was the reason that the downstairs was as cool as it was, the poor little thing was probably going to burn out if we tried to run it all day.

We had replaced our (downstairs!) furnace a couple of winters previously, so we already had a contact with 72 Degrees heating and air conditioning, not to mention a maintenance contract.  This got us next day service.  That was the good news.  Now the bad news:  the compressor on the Air Conditioning unit was gone.  Replacement cost:  $1,500, or $4,000 if we wanted to replace the entire system.

We are not rich.  Sure, Pam and I pull in enough income that we are edging into the top 10% in the US, but believe me, that is not rich.  We (this year) are finally pulling enough ahead of things that we were able to afford a couple of small home improvement projects this year (see shed and painting/carpet projects mentioned in previous posts).  Those things have absorbed all of our extra income for the year (and added a couple of grand to our credit balance that we hope to pay back off over the next year).  Replacing the compressor (no way we could afford the complete new system!) was going to hurt.  Not a crippling hurt like the furnace two years ago was (had to tap into our 401K for that), but not fun.

Oh, did I mention the worse news?  A compressor is not a part that a repair guy carries around in his truck.  They did have them in stock (two!), but it would be Thursday before he could get it installed.

Today's high is expected to be 97.  Tomorrow is forecast at 103.  Welcome to the south.