Instead, we get the handyman who really had no training or idea what to do

In a way, the way we handled selling our house feels a lot like quitting a job before you have another one lined up. I’ve never done that and hope that I never do. As I’m just years from retirement, I’m hoping I can stay inside the zone controlled HVAC of the office until then. Well really, I’m counting on it. But the first part of this retirement stage was to get the most for our family home. And when the prices for homes around here skyrocketed last year, we knew we had to take advantage of that. So we replaced the HVAC equipment with the latest in residential HVAC. The HVAC technology in that house was just the best. It was such a joy to live with while we were selling the house. Once it sold, and it sold quickly for way more than we were expecting, it was time to pack up and leave. That’s where the analogy of quitting a job without one lined up comes in. And that’s how we ended up in a rented condo without the quality heating and air that we just purchased for the old house. I have to say that, while my expectations weren’t high, I’ve been quite disappointed with the heating and cooling comfort in this condo. And my complaints fall on deaf ears as the rental company has yet to send out an HVAC professional. Instead, we get the handyman who really had no training or idea what to do. It’s really not such a good situation. However, I’ve decided to use it as fuel to get us motivated for finding our own place once again.

air conditioning supplier

In my heart, I knew that what the HVAC technician was saying was the truth.

I just knew it.

But the news that the HVAC unit was on the way out sure didn’t fit our financial planning. So I tried to tell myself that maybe our HVAC professionals was just erring on the side of caution. Perhaps, the HVAC equipment would hold on a lot longer so we could save for new residential HVAC. At least, that’s the story I had going in my head. The bottom line is that I should have been much more prepared for the end of our heating and cooling equipment. Once that HVAC unit turned 20, I should have simply started saving for the new one. I remember thinking about it but I also never did anything more than think about it. My wife and I discussed our options and we decided that we would just start saving our money as fast as we could. The bad thing was that we were going into summer which is the main focus of HVAC in this area. But we made a plan to curb the use of the HVAC cooling as much as possible in an effort to reduce the load on the heat pump. It went fine until we got into August. Then, we both walked into a house that was hot and sticky. The heat pump was dead and we had no choice but to put down what we’d saved and finance the rest with the HVAC company. The HVAC professionals even loaned us 3 portable air conditioning units until the new heat pump arrived. Not an ideal result but not terrible either.

quality hvac equipment

My dad was fond of saying that when it came to certain things, it was best to let a professional handle it.

This had a lot to do with the fact that in his profession, he ended up cleaning up a lot of unnecessary messes during his career.

And he did that in his own life as well. He didn’t work on the car of the HVAC equipment because he wasn’t trained to do that. My dad always felt it was better to leave things in the hands of a professional instead of just messing things up worse. My dad is probably rolling over in his grave after the total ignorance I displayed with my gas furnace. And honestly, my first thought was to call the HVAC professionals. But somewhere inside me, I had that sneaking feeling that I could maybe take care of the problem myself and get the gas furnace back on. Of course, that was complete lunacy. When I took the panel off the gas furnace, I noticed that there was some sort of switch that looked burnt out. So I went to the hardware store, got a similar switch and the gas furnace came back to life. And it was doing the HVAC heating I’d hoped it would do until late that night when I heard a really awful sound and the gas furnace turned off. Turns out that switch was not factory authorized and allowed the gas furnace to get too hot. That basically ended up almost destroying the gas furnace and I was stuck with a giant HVAC repair bill.

thermostat

I just about quit.

In fact, I had the conversation with my immediate boss that I would be giving my notice.

That’s how frustrated I was. I had changed roles in order to help the company and now I was ready to quit without another job lined up. That’s just not like me but that’s where I was. 2 years ago, corporate asked me to come out of the field and into the office. I have never been an air conditioning at work guy as I preferred being onsite with the project I was working on. But there was a big need for my help and I’d been with the company nearly 20 years so I acquiesced and took a desk job inside the air conditioning of the office. Yet, the air conditioning of the office was even worse than I thought it would be. And I mean that literally. The space was large enough for 75 people to be working in but there was only one thermostat. So that meant there was one heating and cooling setting for all of us. I was on a side of the building that got direct sunlight heating in the afternoon and it was sweltering. It got so bad that I actually saw two colleagues almost come to blows over the state of the HVAC setting. That was it for me. I didn’t like the work I was doing and I didn’t see exactly how it was helping me or the company to not be out doing the site project work. So I just told the upper bosses that I was through and I sited the fact that they couldn’t even get the air conditioning right in the office.

heater for sale

Sometimes I can do stuff that just blows my mind.

I’m a fairly intelligent human who has a family and holds down a good job.

But working inside the zone controlled HVAC of a fancy office doesn’t mean that I can’t do stupid stuff. And if I did this sort of stuff without thinking, that would be one thing. But, as with this HVAC repair fiasco, I kept on even when the red flags were going off all around me. It started on a Friday evening after a long work week. I was the first one home as my wife was at a conference and the kids were with friends. Walking in my house is a pleasure because I’m hit with all the perfect air conditioning I can stand. On this summer evening, I walked into a wall of heat and humidity. Obviously, the HVAC unit had been off pretty much the entire day. I figured that the breaker had tripped somehow. But when I took a look at the thermostat, it clearly had power. It was after business hours which made my first mistake critical. I simply didn’t call the HVAC company in order to avoid the extra HVAC service charge for after hours repair. Then it dawned on me that it was Friday and the air conditioning could be off all weekend. Again, I should have just bitten the bullet and called for the HVAC professional. Instead, I decided to have a look at the HVAC equipment myself to see if I could fix it. Again, huge warning bells and sirens going off in my head but I kept at it anyway. I ended up voiding the HVAC warranty and just made everything worse.

furnace filter

I can definitely be hard headed in the best of times.

Not sure if this is genetic, a default behavior or just what.

But I’m definitely the sort that can be awfully stubborn. It sure hasn’t gotten better the older I’ve become either. But when I’m wrong, I recognize it, accept it and move on. The situation with replacing our HVAC equipment to sell our house is a great example of that behavior. My wife and I just really couldn’t resist when the real estate market exploded around here about a year ago. We’d been wanting to pare down and simplify for years. The real estate market and the extraordinary prices that other homes were going for motivated us. We decided to put the house on the market. My wife had a realtor in mind who had great references. So we met with her to see just what we were dealing with. The lady was a pro but it was awfully hard to hear all the things that she wanted us to do in order to get the house on the market. Replacing the heating and cooling equipment was just a step too far for me. I just couldn’t see the reason for that sort of cash outlay to get the latest in residential HVAC. Again, the realtor was a real pro and acknowledged my hesitation when it came to replacing a heat pump that was but a dozen or so years old. She came equipped with comps and data which proved to me that this cost outlay would come back to us many times over when it came to the final price of the house.

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This is the first spring that I haven’t had to suffer inside the air conditioning comfort of my home.

Our winters are very mild with not much need for heating from the heat pump.

So this is normally just the best time of year weather and temperature wise. Yet, I have spent my winters tentatively enjoying the sunshine and the blue sky because I knew what was coming. We get spring early here. The first big yellow wave of pollen hits in February. And that’s generally when I start to suffer with seasonal allergies. There’s just no escaping it. I have to take meds just to breathe and not be a sloppy, sneezing mess all the time. I can’t even find refuge inside my house. Well, that is all over now. My house is now a completely pollen free zone thanks to an addition to our HVAC equipment. In years before, the pollen would follow me inside the house and just punish me every time the HVAC unit cycled on. Then, I made a trip to the HVAC company that changed my life. The HVAC professionals showed me the whole home air purification system that fits inside the HVAC equipment. This thing destroys the DNA of airborne contaminants using UV light. It simply burns them up. So there is just no pollen floating around the air of my home any longer. I can breathe inside my house and not be wheezing and sneezing from my seasonal allergies thanks to this air purifier. Yea, this spring has been my favorite so far by miles. I’m actually enjoying watching things green up around me knowing that I have a pollen free sanctuary thanks to air purification.

air conditioning installation

It’s good to try new things.

That’s something that I have always believed in. But moving up north for a job was at the outer limits of new things for me. I think I sort of knew this at the time. That’s why I made sure of how long the commitment would be. I definitely wanted to work my way into a nice office in the zone controlled HVAC of corporate. So, I was willing to deal with moving up north for 5 years. Now that I look back on the experience, I can smile. But while I was living it, I have to say that things seemed awfully bleak for me. This job offer to help lead our office in the north was one that had definite career track all over it. That appealed to me of course and I thought I could take the winter weather and the challenge of the new position. Well, both of those things sort of kicked my butt right out of the gate. I moved up there in early fall but the temperature felt like winter to me. That has everything to do with the fact that I had never spent a winter with anything but a heat pump. Even then, the HVAC heating rarely had to come on during our really mild winters. But it just got so much worse. Thankfully, I had a new gas furnace to rely on. And believe me, I was cranking it. Still, I was pretty miserable and even had to put a space heater in my office. But, those five years were worth it and I’m comfortably inside plenty of HVAC cooling back in our southern offices.
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If I learned anything from the time at home in my air conditioning during the pandemic, it was to slow down. I’m not sure that I would have ever really learned this lesson had the pandemic not forced me to stay at home. The office with the zone controlled HVAC sent us all home in the late spring of 2020. That’s when I got a crash course in the fact that there is more to life than staying busy and checking things off my list. Working from home in my own air conditioning certainly took some time to get accustomed to doing well. But I got the hang of it and ended up actually sort of liking being at home to work. For one, I got a lot more work done without all the constant interruptions and useless meetings. It also allowed me to have a bit more control of my schedule which helped me to be even more present in my life. I started doing yoga and meditating to start my day. Each evening, I’d get out of the air conditioning to take a walk and just breathe. That was really nice. A wonderful byproduct of this change was that I was just so much more engaged with the moment. That’s new for me. But being aware actually saved me a bunch of money when it came to the HVAC equipment. I was able to hear just the slightest change in the sound of the HVAC unit. And that got me to call the HVAC company to have an HVAC professional take a look. Turns out, there was a part going bad that had it failed, it would have cost me a bunch of money in an HVAC repair.

commercial air conditioning

And the HVAC cooling I get really makes sleeping during the summer quite comfortable

I suppose the idea of living off the grid conjures up plenty of thoughts and images in people’s mind. It never gets old to see the reaction on some folk’s face when I tell them that I live out in nature and self sustainably. This often receives a variety of reactions. Whether I’m in the zone controlled HVAC of a business office or the air conditioning of someone’s house, I get a reaction. Most folks are stunned that I have clean clothes and wear shoes. To some, the idea of living sustainably without relying on utilities is something akin to living in a cave. Of course, that’s not the case at all and a lot of these people just couldn’t imagine doing anything of the sort. I mean, how could they give up TV, drive thru hamburgers and air conditioning? Well, I do without the drive thru hamburgers just fine. But I do have a TV and air conditioning along with wifi, a nice kitchen and many other amenities. The heating in my house is primarily done with a wood stove. But I also have a pair of ductless heat pumps inside my 2 bedroom cabin. The ductless heat pump is nice when I’m lazy to start a fire or I let it go out. And the HVAC cooling I get really makes sleeping during the summer quite comfortable. I have a solar array that provides all the electricity I need along with a big garden for all of my food. When people come to my house, they are just stunned that I live very much the way they do.

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