Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Sweatbox - Further Update

It seems that life has been on hold since the air conditioner died- it's been pretty hot and to make things worse, the humidity level is higher than usual for this time of year. Even riding in 95 plus degree weather is preferable and I've been spending a lot of time at the stable- at least when I get hot there I can put my head under a hose. Max has been getting quite a few baths lately.

Because of the length of time that it will take to repair the air conditioning, the home warranty company offered to give us $150 towards a window air conditioner. After going to Lowes and picking out a model for $224 that offered a compromise between power and price, I then spent a Sunday afternoon installing the window air conditioner in the bedroom. That was interesting...

I then found out that the manufacturer recommends running the unit only from a wall outet that's dedicated to that outlet (in order to minimize power draw). Window air conditioners can draw a heavy electrical load and there's a danger of overloading circuits. Unfortuantely, there are no dedicated circuits in the bedroom but from what I can determine from working with the circuit breakers, it appears that the circuit also only goes to the TV so it doesn't seem that there will be much else drawing on the same circuit.

We've been operating the unit for about four days and I've monitored it very carefully- so far no problems but when the compressor turns on, the lights in the house momentarily dim. I really don't want this to go on too long and I turn off the air conditioning during the day when we're not at home.

Well, supposedly the air conditioner will be repaired today and it had better happen or I'm going to be one very pissed off person. We shall see...

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