Monday, July 11, 2011

Charred Lemons

I wish I had something really profound to say today but I'm a little sleepy since I've been up on and off since 1:30 this morning!  When life gives you lemons you make lemonade, right?  Even when they're charred!

We have dogs.  And for whatever reason, they decided that they needed to go outside at 1:30 in the morning.  Which meant I had to get up...ugh!  But, had they not decided to take a jolly jaunt outside I wouldn't have noticed that the house seemed to be warming up, nor would I have noticed the funny "hot" smell or the fact that the Air Conditioner was not shutting off in it's usual cycle.  Usually when this happens it is a sign that the condenser tray is not draining fast enough and water is backing up.  So I pulled the top cover and checked but it looked fine.  It was pretty hot outside and it seemed to be blowing semi cool air so I figured we would be o.k. until 4:00 when my husband Kenny got up for work.  By the way, did I mention we are under a heat advisory which means the afternoon air temp is supposed to hit around 100 before factoring in the humidity?  Yeah, we had a toasty day ahead of us!

Four in the morning is a hard time for having a good time!  Kenny got up and I told him about the AC blowing unusually warm air.  So he checked the top, just like I did-nothing there.  That meant checking under the house which meant unscrewing the skirting by flashlight to check the drainage line.  With flashlight and broom in hand he crawled under.  It was unusually wet.  So he crawled back out and went under the porch to check the outside drainage line-dry as a bone.  Meanwhile, he had me turn off the Air Conditioner inside the house.  The outside compressor shut off but the blower fan did not.  That was not a good sign!  We cut the power at the fuse box and then opened up the bottom.  It was wet.  So Kenny started taking it apart.  He discovered that the water had not run in to the drain, it had run straight down to the bottom of the furnace and the wiring and relay switches were wet, which caused them to char and just about completely charred and melted the relay switch for the furnace.  The furnace and the AC were both running at the same time.  Really bad would be an understatement!

Fortunately I am married to a guy who builds airplanes for a living and whose favorite weekend hobby is turning wrenches on vehicles.  He has the uncanny gift of being able to reverse engineer anything he takes apart!  So that's what he did!  He took the whole shabang apart, created his own schematic and then went in to town later in the morning to get the parts to fix it.  I have air conditioning again!  Woo hoo!

Kenny still needs to build the solution to the initial problem but he already has a plan, he just needs to get the pieces parts to build it and install it below the condenser coils. 

My husband-my hero!  Not only is he good looking, he's pretty handy to have around!  Pass the lemonade.  Pardon the charred taste.

No comments:

Post a Comment