Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Weekend Update

Holy cow! I can''t believe it's been so long since I last post! Sorry for the radio silence, but it's been another of those weeks. I hope not to make this one as long as the last post, lol, but we shall see. You've been warned. At least I'm happier now than I was then.

So, all was well in Megan's world until August 10th. My husband called me at about 2 o'clock to tell me that our air conditioner had stopped working again. This time it just fizzled out - no lightning like last time. At first my plan was to just get a new hard start and install it when I got home since I had just watched the repairman replace one that Monday and I knew it was easy. It turns out that you can't just go to the hardware store and buy a hard start. No stores in our area had them except the ac repair places and they wouldn't just sell you the piece. Amazon had them, but it would be at least Tuesday before one would arrive; so we knew we just had to endure the heat.
This was taken at 9pm one night. It got up to 94 at the hottest!
This time, I called our home owner's insurance company. I told them about how lightning had struck our front yard a week before and an ac company came and did a bandaid style fix but it had officially died. I was seriously amazed at how nice and helpful they were! I was fully expecting to get the run around like you hear so often, especially since my claim was on an ac unit which is normally not covered, but since it was caused by storm damage they would cover it! I had the ac company salesperson out on Monday to give me prices to send the insurance company and the wheels were in motion. We also got to claim our electronics that the strike had affected, so our tv (the hdmi ports were shot), our wireless router, and our desktop computer were also covered under the same deductible. I was so surprised by all this - as a new homeowner I have never had to deal with insurance before and the only stories you actually hear about these situations are the bad ones, but I really have nothing but great things to say about our insurance company (which is Tower Hill just so you know).

We stayed in the house as long as we could, but Tuesday night it was officially too hot to even sleep there - and that was with the portable ac unit we installed in our bedroom running on full blast; the poor thing just couldn't compete with how hot the house was. So we've been staying at my in-laws' house since then. We would sleep at their house and then I would wake up early in the morning, drive home and get ready for work in the heat. I also would swing by on my way home from work just to get clothes and check on things.

After getting all the particulars sorted out about the ac, they got our new unit in and were able to install it yesterday! We used Colman AC and they did a fantastic job! We switched from the "water to air" unit that the house had back to "air to air", basically giving us what most everyone else has. The unit was more efficient, had a longer warranty, and came with a bigger rebate from the electric company so it was really a no brainer. It's a Carrier system too, which I've been told is very good.

Anyway, those poor guys from Colman arrived yesterday morning at 8:30 am and didn't leave until 5 pm! It was so hot and they had to do a lot of manual labor - it was hard for me to stay downstairs and I wasn't doing anything, so I seriously commend those men.
This is what our ac unit looked like before - it had been there since 1983 - yeah... It was pretty gross and the cabinet was just as bad. The unit was sitting on some 2x4s in the cabinet and all that moldy and nasty insulation was exposed.
Since our system didn't have an outside unit before (water to air are all in one unit), we had to clear out this area to put the compressor outside the kitchen window. This whole area was grown over and it had several pineapple plants too. We were sad to dig them up, but we are transplanting them to a different area, so hopefully they survive.
See our two half grown pineapples?! They came with the house lol.
Once they got the old unit out, they fixed up the cabinet. They custom cut that piece of plywood to go around the new air handler, insulated the whole thing and just generally cleaned it up. I was so excited when I came downstairs and saw this :)
After all is said and done, here is our new unit outside - it's huge! Our house is big enough that it needed a 5 ton unit and this beast is what makes it all work. The drain pipe was honestly a constant flow from suscking all the humidity out.
And this is the pièce de résistance - our air handler and new cabinet. I never would have thought I would describe an air conditioner as beautiful, but this looks beautiful to me. Just look at the different in the cabinet itself! It's all clean and insulated - the edges are caulked and have mastic over them so they look better. They also added a service shut off which we didn't have before. We could feel the difference within a few minutes just from the humidity leaving the house and I could have hugged those guys. They were so nice and did such a great job - I was absolutely thrilled yesterday when it was done. Even better, as they turned on the air for the first time I was opening that day's mail and found our checks from the insurance company! It was all in all a great day.

Until later...

My husband and I were watching tv last night and enjoying our cooling down house when our power shut off completely at 10 pm. There was no storm, no pop, no breakers tripped, and only our house was affected. Great. We called the power company and they sent out a technician. They arrived at 11pm and told us that our transformer was going bad on our pole - the pole that only supplied our hose - nice. So they replaced it last night, but the man said it takes a whole crew to do and it would take about 3 hours, so we grabbed our stuff again and headed to my in-laws' house again. We were not very happy at the time. I mean, really, what are the odds?! We didn't even get to cool the house down completely and then that happened. So our elation was dampened considerably. Thankfully, when I came home this morning to get ready the power was all on and the house was completely cooled down, so at least there's that.

In spite of the unfortunate occurrence last night, I am still happy with the whole experience. Was it pleasant? Absolutely not. But thanks to some great customer service and nice people, it was taken care of at very little cost to me. If lightning had never struck, the ac would have died someday anyway and I would have had to pay the $6,000.00 out of my own pocket. Also if the ac hadn't gone out, we never would have claimed the computer and the tv through our insurance because it wouldn't have been worth it after paying our $1,000.00 deductible. Since all these problems were caused by the lightning, they were all covered with just the one deductible payment. It really could not have worked out better for us this time and it feels nice to have finally caught a break on all the problems with our house. This has also renewed my vigor to get things done to improve the house. I will be painting more of the living room this week to start. I'm so glad it has all been taken care of and we don't have to worry about the ac anymore :)

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