Some of my blogging friends are getting ready to move north, back to Canada, and soon others will be heading toward cooler country. I'll miss them being nearby (well, relatively close by), but I always still enjoy their adventures.
I'm kind of worried about this summer. Our air conditioner is 14 years old. Our previous one lasted about that long before it konked out one day when it was a sweltering 128 degrees. At that time, I stayed in the house for 3 days while the guys came out and put in a completely whole, new unit. I remember running 3 fans in the house, having a bowl of ice cubes, and dipping towels in the bowl and then putting them on my forehead. Ahhhh...those were the days, right? Nope...that's not for me anymore. As we get older, I'm finding that we just can't take the heat. Unfortunately, the compressor lasted just a few days short of its 5 year warranty, and I called them up and they installed a new one. Phew! Good thing for warranties, right? We've been pretty good about maintenence, but if it goes out this summer, we're SCREWED. I've been looking at those room Mitsubishi wall units and, if they aren't TOO expensive, I'd like to just get a couple of those for the living room and kitchen. Who knows? Our daughter and son-in-law have a Goodman a/c and something went out on their NEW ONE last summer and it cost them $800.00!!!! Yikes! Our son has a double unit, because of the size of his house, and while it was sitting empty,(his was a foreclosure) somebody STOLE one of his units, so he has a fairly new one. But, even a/c units don't last much longer than 10 years down here with the heat.
We usually get out of here for about a week in August~either to the Sierra or the Mogollon Rim, but I'm not sure we can afford that this summer unless we go tent camping. Really? The Mogollon Rim in AUGUST? That's when they have their daily thunderstorms and I don't think I want to be in a tent then. PERIOD.
We haven't firmed up ANY plans for this summer yet. We were waiting to hear when my school will start up again (apparently late in August) and hubby's schedule. We're still waiting to hear his schedule...sigh...so we have NO plans yet. Our daughter and son-in-law can't afford to go anywhere this summer (with a year old baby and a new couch and air conditioning repairs from last summer), so they'll be around all summer.
Thunderheads over Deep Canyon from summer, 2011.
We enjoy our AC...central...and geothermal to boot! Both our heat and AC run off the ego...expensive to out in, but worth it. We never had or heard of it until we moved to VA and our old place had it...we fell in love with low bills so when this house was being built, our builder who is very "green" and energy conscious, told us he was doing ego thermal, we knew it was a match!...:)JP
ReplyDeleteFirst off, those are some huge cloud formations. Can you imagine living in that area "back in the day?" Back before there were even swamp coolers?
ReplyDeletewow, i hope you figure out where to go and how to stay cool this summer. I'm so glad i don't live down in the inland empire anymore. We will still get heat but not in the 100's.
ReplyDeleteWe went to Tom's Farms a couple weeks ago and it was 90 something (they were having a heat wave down the hill). I couldn't believe how much I disliked it and I use to love heat and summers.
If there's something good about this, is that you're anticipating for the worst. You could get lucky this year not to have your AC conk out at the most inopportune time, but it pays to have some cash saved up somewhere for repairs or a completely new unit, just in case.
ReplyDeleteDuane Simpson @ AccuTemp.biz