Jar of Goodness 8.14.22: New HVAC System

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”

This week, I’m expressing thanks for our new HVAC system for Apartment A.

. . . Or, as we usually call it, “the second floor.” We’ve been getting away from calling our first and second floors “Apartment B” and “Apartment A.” Grandma actually rented out the first floor as “Apartment B,” but we have no intentions of renting out any portion of our house. We have very little desire to be landlords.

Note that the rest of the pictures in this post will be "before and after" images

But it still makes all kinds of sense to have separate HVAC systems for the two formerly separate apartments. For one thing—as we learned these past few weeks when the second-floor unit went belly-up—if you have two units, one will still be working when the other one fails.

Or, as I told the fellow who installed our new furnace on Thursday, “It’s like the Klingon physiology: having two hearts means that one can keep beating when the other one is destroyed by an enemy’s bat’leth.” (I was extremely pleased when he smiled knowingly at the citation.)

So, it was expensive, but of course. We are fortunate to have the resources to pay for it. We are fortunate that we’re long-term, service-contract customers of AireServ/Nick Rackers, and they responded promptly when we called them with our air-conditioning emergency. Also, that they loaned us a window unit to help us limp through that last week of humid, 90+ weather.

The installation went off without a hitch. Well, except that the furnace they delivered had been “destroyed” in shipping, so the installation guy installed an identical unit that had arrived with a screwed-up motherboard, so he cannibalized the motherboard from our “destroyed” unit and put it in the otherwise good unit and gave us that.

Oh, and there was a problem with the wiring they needed to fix before they could leave at 5 p.m. But hey, it’s workin’, and we have a ten-year warranty, annnnnd we finally have a humidifier, which will be incredibly lovely this winter.

So, the next question is: which will come next, the new roof or the new car? The roof was supposedly being held up by the hot weather (steep roof + hot weather = hard on the shingles). The holdup on the new car, of course, is the same thing that held up our new refrigerator this year: pandemic supply chain problems.

Aaaaaaannnd we’re supposed to get rain this week.