Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Yes, can you believe it?

When you hear people say to turn down or turn off your AC
when you leave town, they are not talking to people
who live in weather above 100 degrees.
We were gone for the weekend (woohoo! my first this summer)
and when we came back, our AC would not cool down our house completely.
Do you remember when we were kids and dad would always have us go check the refrigeration unit to see if the pipe was frozen or not?
I had no idea that that would happen to a unit like we have.
.
.
Well, it did.
The unit outside with the compressor had a completely frozen pipe. Not just a little bit.
The repairman went up into our attic where the main unit is and said that it was a solid sheet of ice.
(I guess the air flows through something to cool off the air before it is pushed into the house, and the thing the air flows through was a solid sheet of ice. Therefore, no air was getting through to cool our house.)
So, Mr. Repairman turned on my HEATER to thaw the ice. My house was already pushing 78 degrees. (more in my bedroom)
There was too much ice so the heater idea wasn't working, so he had to turn it all off after 20-30 minutes and just wait till the ice thawed.
So,
here I was in the middle of a St. George summer day in July,
109 degrees outside
7 + months pregnant
with my house heater running.
.
.
Once it thawed out, Mr. R could then check to see if it was low on freon,
which it wasn't too low.
The cause could be several things:
a power fluctuation,
dirty air filters,
etc.
I'm putting my money on the dirty air filters.
The last one we pulled out was so brown that it looked like a
board.
Needless to say, I will be getting my air filters changed
on my first request from now on. (They are 11 ft. high)
(I can tell when they are ready to be changed, cause the air "wheezes" through the filter when the filter is clogged.)
And I won't be turning down my AC when we leave town.
It will cost way less money to pay for AC for 2 days,
than it will to pay for a repairman.

1 comment:

Cheryl said...

wow. all because of the filters. i'll never take for granted having matt's grandpa come and change our filters for us (on top of our plant shelf). he does it every month though.