Tuesday, August 09, 2005

The Kindness of Strangers

Woke up this morning in a pool of sweat. Seems our air conditioner had bitten the dust, or so I thought. The inside unit was blowin' and blowin', nice warm Texas August air. I took a look, the fan in the outside compressor unit wasn't moving. Oh, foo and many other colorful expressions. I spun the fan, it wasn't a bearing. I messed with the circuit breakers, no joy. More colorful comments.

I know a lot of people, unfortunately none in the AC biz so I did what any other technology-challenged individual does, called someone in the Yellow Pages. The feller I spoke with said it would be at least a couple of days before he could do much more than look at it and order the needed parts and that it was about fifty bucks for that call.

He asked me what the unit was doing told him that the outside fan was not working but that it spun freely so it wasn't the bearing.

He told me to take the cover off and see if the ants had gotten into the switches, preventing the switches from making contact. That was the problem, some Raid, some Fire Ant bait and a good spray with canned air and we're blowing cool air again.

The house is cooling off and the AC repair guy didn't make a dime. I wonder what kind of pie he likes? With what I know about air conditioners he could have soaked us big time. We owe him at least a pie.

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