Our House A/C is back online

We have had issues with the a/c in our house the past years, and basically went without for a year (very tough) and then put in a couple of window units last year, much better. This year we used those two window units again, and got a smaller one to add to the mix in the “basement” bathroom. That gave us a unit on each floor of the house.

This year though it’s been tougher, we did have some fans that we used to move the a/c around last year, those broke one by one, cheap $10 box fans from Target, that if they go “plunk” on the ground, chances are great that one of the plastic blades will snap off, rendering the fan as an out-of-balance washer load. No thank you to that function, is my response!

So this year the upstairs has suffered –a bit too warm to very much warmer than one prefers, later in the day the rooms getting warmer and warmer. At some point I turned on the house “fan” without a/c … using the window units still for a/c, and just using the house system as a big old “fan” to move air around.

It got hotter and hotter out the other week, so I tried the A/C in the house system, to see if it would kick in (we haven’t had it checked out, it just was troublesome for us, not being a good enough system in this house, and an incident of someone turning the thermostat all the way down caused the system to freeze up when it wasn’t caught, and it was something that we maybe should have called a tech in for, but couldn’t afford it. That was in September a few years back and we did alright without a/c for the rest of the year, it was the NEXT year that it was tough, Spring gets hot and steamy might fast in the South.) — when I turned it on no cool air began coming out of the vents. I went outside, the big box out there was just sitting there, still as a statue internally, but there was a “buzz” sound coming from it inside somewhere.

I then turned it off and on and who knows how long that went on, every so often over a few days. Then I must have just let it stay set to “auto” and 70 degrees, ’cause last week at some point the children started complaining that their hallway bathroom was “Freezing!” and I didn’t check it out that day, I was in a fog bank for some reason. I was working on the window units, trying to turn them just warm enough to do the job economically, in tandem with each other. I found then I was actually turning them up and up and up, feeling a bit more chilled than usual, and it didn’t stop via that upward movement of the Window Unit A/C temps. The next day “the bathroom is freezing!” complaints continued and somewhere that day we figured out, The House A/C is ON! It’s set to “Auto” and it’s running, and it’s working well. Hmmm. It’s cycling on and off, the outside portion spinning just fine, cold air flowing out of the vents.

So we took the window units and turned them all off. All was well. We then took the kitchen window unit out, and the coolness continues along very well, maybe better (now that the window there is completely shut.) Next on the agenda is to take the unit out of our master bedroom, to see if that helps with the “air leakage” probable thing there. I don’t mean it’s a problem we’ve noted, but it’s a probable thing that a window unit installed in a ‘seasonal’ way isn’t going to sit there and seal up the hole. It worked alright when it produced cold air, but it’s not doing well to just sit there now.

Our house originally had french double doors in the kitchen, out to the backyard/deck. Those doors were probably the worst thing in regards to how the a/c worked and caused more problems than that, and in an effort to reduce horrid glare and heat sucking into the house, we tore the doors out last year and s tudded out the space and boarded it up. It was a first-stage effort in our slow re-do of the kitchen. It really cut down the heat and glare in the house when that was boarded up, the window unit in the kitchen was great then. It’s really dark in the house on the main level though, now. The other side of the house from the kitchen (all the main level) is the front door and the “living room” which for us is the “dining room” and a place for my scrapbooking stuff. This side of the house faces N-NW … it’s dark all morning to afternoon, and only a bit of Summer sunshine reaches the windows. Most of the rest of the year it’s fairly sunshineless, and just outdoor light seeps in the windows, it’s gray blah. The kitchen window had that unit in it Spring to early Autumn last year. Taking it out for the Winter season allowed more light to flow into the kitchen again, though nothing like before, when the double doors were there (thankfully for the summer!) This side of the house faces S-SE and is quite bright. We need better doors installed, then we can handle the light and hot air and have doors again. That will give more light to the main floor since the other thing we’ve done is open up the wall between the kitchen and “living room” allowing passage of people and light throughout the main level of the house.

It all goes to prove, to me, that horrible doors will be the detrimental-est thing to house comfort. These doors were normal french doors that are installed on many houses, no doubt, not high-end, just regular. The things, for us, never seemed to be so great, and there didn’t seem to be anything to fix about them. They were just the wrong thing to have on the SE side of a house with no shading, weather be it sun or rain or hail hit the doors brutally every time any of those weather aspects were present.

So the A/C is running in the house again, and it’s hot outside. The house is regulating better than it ever did before. It’s those doors.

In our kitchen we want to install a new window where the doors used to be, that’s where the sink will eventually be positioned. Where the window is now is the general region where the eventual new door will go, hopefully a sliding lovely door (Marvin, or some such brand.) We can’t do the work until we can afford to search for the door. But once we have that, it will be wonderful to install and grand good light can fill the space without adding to the heat in summer, or cold in winter. 🙂 It’s in the future, something that my personality is accustomed to, future visions, waiting, dreaming.