Thursday, June 22, 2006

AC Woes

I haven't posted about this yet, because I've been waiting until I had a nice solid block of time to rant and rage about my stupid air conditioning. So here goes...

Last Friday night when we got home from Duluth, the house was warm. At first I thought, oh no big deal, we must have turned it off before we left. I'll just turn it back on now. At 4am, when I couldn't sleep because I was roasting, I checked - the AC was not running. Somehow in my sleeping stupor, I had the bright idea of checking the circuit breaker. Sure enough, the AC had tripped and was turned off. Hmm odd, maybe something happened with that huge storm? My computers had both reset also... Flipped the switch and went back to bed.

Woke up Saturday morning and things were fine. House was nice and cool. By mid afternoon, the AC had shut off again. Checked the circuit breaker, and it was tripped again. Tried to reset it - instantly it tripped back. Tried to force it back in, and I could see blue sparks behind the breaker. Okay... bad idea. (Yes, I tried many more times though)

4 days in the heat and $65 dollars later, I'm told my AC compressor is completely dead. Replacement would be somewhere around $800 dollars, and I'm sure that doesn't include labor. The alternative is to just bite the bullet and install an entire new Air Conditioner. Price tag on that? $2700+

Sigh...

On the plus side, installing a new air conditioner should reduce our cooling costs by as much as 40%! Most people might see that as a money saver, but I'm actually hoping it means something else. I'm hoping that if my AC is more efficient, I'll just get to keep it running longer without getting cut off for using too much energy!

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