One For All Air Conditioning

On Friday, I got home at around three in the afternoon since I was on the morning shift.

A reminder in my phone calendar said it was time for an air conditioning tune-up that I had been postponing for a month, but it could wait because I did not feel like dealing with any HVAC business that weekend.

I wanted to get my chores done in record time to relax during the weekend. While I was at it, I realized that the mini split air conditioner had switched itself off, and nothing I did was helping, so I had to contact a cooling expert. The cooling specialist must have been in the neighborhood because she arrived twenty minutes after the call. When the tech explained what was wrong with the ductless heat pump, I was not even concentrating. All I wanted was for him to be through so that I could finish my chores. By six in the evening, I was done and ready to order pizza because there was no way I was going to dirty the dishes. I got a call, and the caller said he was from some high-end hotel and was asking if I was going to check in that night. I tried explaining that he got the wrong number, but he would not have any of it. He even assured me that they had handled their HVAC duct and temperature control issue. The management had a new thermostat in place. The caller also mentioned something to do with duct sealing and improved indoor air quality. All these did not make sense to me. Why would I care if some hotel had hired a new contractor to install new air conditioning equipment or a zone control system? I just wanted pizza or fries and a good night’s sleep.

heating and air conditioning

So I tend to be a total thermostat hawk.

It’s the truth and as much as I pretend I’m not, I so am.

But keeping that thermostat discipline saves us a ton of money on HVAC cooling. Where we live, there isn’t all that much worry when it comes HVAC heating needs. The heat pump might come on a handful of times all winter. This region has a cooling need far more than it has a heating need. That said, the HVAC cooling in this region just isn’t cheap at all. Thus, I’m tough about the thermostat staying no more than 15 degrees cooler than the outside temperature during the peak heating hours. But the good part of this thermostat patrol is the fact that I use the savings to help pay for our accommodations when we go on vacation. The big vacation for us right now is at the end of the summer. We go away to the beach for 2 glorious weeks. And we stay in a vacation home that we rent. This place is just the best. It’s a five minute walk to the beach but it also comes with state of the art HVAC technology. That’s a big deal for me because our beach vacation is the one time a year that I go hog wild when it comes to thermostat setting. And with the zone controlled HVAC, I have a thermostat in my bedroom. My poor wife has to bring pajamas because I crank the air conditioning down so low. But I love to get my money’s worth out of the air conditioning for those two weeks a year when I’m not paying the tab.

 

 

a/c serviceman

When I was a kid, the toughest thing I had to face really was having my parents divorce.

And I promised myself that if I got married and had kids, I’d do all I could not to get divorced.

Well sitting inside the less that total quality heating and air of this apartment, clearly that’s not how it went. I’m living in a not so great apartment although I own a home that has some of the best residential HVAC a person could own. It’s a sad thing getting divorced and I hate that it had to happen. For sure, it could have been worse. At least my wife and I didn’t get to the point where we just hated each other. That’s a good thing. Because we started out as great friends who ended up falling in love. But over the years, we grew apart. Thankfully, there aren’t children involved. Yet, there is a house that we have to sell. We’re actually trying to figure out just what to do for the house in order to get the most out of this bomb real estate market. The realtor is suggesting that we upgrade the HVAC equipment again. The fact is that we just bought the latest in HVAC technology just 4 years ago. At least my wife and I are agreed that this seems like a low priority on the upgrade list. However, I’m still going to call the HVAC company myself to finally get an HVAC professional to look at the HVAC unit in my apartment. Just because I’m living in an apartment doesn’t mean that I have to go without quality heating and air.

 

a/c serviceman

We cashed in and we’re not exactly feeling bad about it.

My wife and I figured if someone was willing to give us what we wanted for our house, then why not.

We upgraded the HVAC equipment to the latest in HVAC technology. The residential HVAC we chose was really state of the art and added so much value to the house. We also had the ductwork cleaning and ductwork resealing done. There weren’t but a few sections of HVAC air ducts that needed to be replaced with that HVAC equipment upgrade. Truly, I really didn’t want to leave the house because it had everything I had ever wanted when it came to quality heating and air. But essentially, I was installing it to say a quick goodbye to it as well. However, that HVAC equipment made a huge difference when it came to potential buyers for the house. In fact, I still think it was a major factor in the bidding war that happened at the end. I couldn’t believe how the price was being driven up. I’ll sure relish in the results though. We made a bundle on a house that we paid off some 10 or 12 years ago. That was the idea for sure but actually moving out of the house was not so easy. It’s hard to really grasp just how much stuff a family can accumulate in nearly 30 years. My wife and I spent a solid week of vacation time just going through it all in that great quality heating and air that had been installed by the HVAC contractor.

Heating and air conditioning

I’ve always worked really hard all my life. Like many in my generation, I’m left wondering just why I followed the rules all the time the way I did. I guess there was this implied promise that if you do all the right things, you’ll be rewarded. I spent a lot of time inside an office with zone controlled HVAC trying to do the right thing by my family. And there are no regrets when it comes to that effort. But my reward was a heart attack from stress at 53 and a divorce. That just didn’t seem right to me. But the longer I sat inside the air conditioning of my new condo pondering it, the more I realized that it just didn’t matter. I think I just had to do what made me happy. So after I got back on my feet, healthier and not quite as heartbroken, I decided to take a sabbatical. I spent the past winter way, way off in a cabin all by myself except for my new life partner who is a lovely black lab. There was a wood stove for heating but the rest was a pretty spartan existence. No wifi or cell phones. Shoot the only new technology in that cabin was HVAC technology. There was a ductless heat pump inside the cabin. At first, I didn’t think that I’d need that at all given how warm the wood stove got one I figured it out. Yet, the HVAC heating from the ductless heat pump did come in quite handy when the fire would burn out. It was an amazing winter alone and I’m now fully prepared to embrace the next chapter of my life a bit more on my terms.

heating maintenance

Like a lot of other people out there, I lost my job due to the pandemic.

It’s a tough thing to lose one’s career.

There are a lot of people who had to sell homes with quality heating and air and all the other amenities because they were unable to afford them. That’s not what happened in my case as I lived in an apartment. And believe me, I was ready for a new heating and cooling method because that apartment just wasn’t very comfortable. Still, I didn’t have an income and had to scramble before I put a giant dent in my savings. But in a way, this turned out to be the best thing that could have ever happened to me. Finally, I let go of the security of the zone controlled HVAC of the office to go out alone. That’s the first thing I thought when I walked out of that zone controlled HVAC with a box of my belongings. So, I started a consulting business from inside that little apartment. I held the costs down and finally started getting some work. The nice thing about what I do is that after a few site visits to the client, I can work from anywhere with just a laptop if need be. A couple of years later, I’m in a tiny home that doubles as my office. I have great heating and cooling which is provided by the ductless heat pump the HVAC contractor installed. It hangs high on the far wall and delivers wonderful air conditioning whenever I need it.

smart thermostat

My wife and I like to make things interesting.

There is a lot of just day to day stuff that we all have to deal with.

So why not just make it all as interesting and playful as possible. That’s just sort of the way we look at life as well. We’d much rather be out there in life than inside the air conditioning just watching TV. So embracing challenges in a fun way is something that we both really enjoy about living together in this partnership. This spring, we decided to commit to a challenge when it comes to saving on the HVAC cooling cost inside our home. It’s just the two of us and a dog and a cat. What we’re spending on cooling just us is sort of absurd. We’d sort of looked at air conditioning as just the price of doing business here in the south. The summer comes with a ton of heat and humidity so we just threw a bunch of HVAC cooling at the problem. And with mixed results. For one, all that time in the air conditioning doesn’t allow for the body to acclimate to the heat at all. That just makes the heat feel even that much more oppressive when you have to leave the air conditioning. So we decided to wait to start the HVAC cooling until the temps were consistently in the 90’s during the day. And then, we’re going to keep the thermostat setting only 15 degrees cooler than the outside air. With the money that we save, we’re going to take a special trip and splurge the whole time.
temperature control