Hot Week

August 23, 2021

I guess the air conditioning unit died weeks ago if not months ago. It died a lingering death. We knew it was not well. Eventually I called a contractor to look at it. He inspected the device in the backyard, called the condenser, and climbed into the attic over the bathroom to check whatever was up there. He climbed back down with an unhappy story.

Weeks ago we read about and watched the TV coverage of the nightmare “heat dome” over the Pacific Northwest, that moved to the Midwest. Innocent people lived through triple-digit temperatures, many if not most without air conditioning. Hundreds died.

As summer approached I heard the usual radio and TV ads by heating/air-conditioning companies of discounts on HVAC system inspections. Through many summers in Virginia we never had problems, usually Sandy kept the house too cold for me. So I ignored the commercials. In early June, when it got warm enough to need or want air-conditioning, we switched on the system and waited. A feeble flow of lukewarm air wafted from the vents. We set the thermostat at 73F, the temperature settled into the low 80s. The system cranked away, all day and all night. The temperature never broke 80. Well, I thought, we were new in this house. Maybe it was working out the kinks. We turned on the ceiling fans.

Sandy and I both grew up in homes without air conditioning. In southern Tennessee she and her family, and many if not most families in those parts endured the five-month-long Southern summer with fans and open windows. I recall lying awake sweating on summer nights in northern New Jersey. Over time more and more homeowners in our neighborhood put in window units and eventually central air. Yet millions of Americans have never had air conditioning. When did it become indispensable?

I read that smart people built primitive air conditioners over the past couple of hundred years. In 1901 Willis Carrier built the first modern air-conditioning unit. Later he formed the Carrier Air Conditioning Company of America. Someone found that in 2019 about 90 percent of new U.S. homes were built with air conditioning (more in the South than elsewhere).  A generation ago air conditioning contributed to the economic growth of the so-called Sunbelt. Earlier, Southern states were mainly sleepy agricultural places, producing cotton, tobacco, indigo, home-raised vegetables. Over time, they recognized they needed air conditioning to attract Northern industry.

Our son Michael and daughter-in-law Caroline visited last month. He said they keep their AC at 71, cooler at night. They arrived on a hot day. We all gathered for dinner, it was stifling. Michael got on a chair and held his hand in front of a ceiling vent. “It’s blowing warm air,” he said. “You need to get someone out here.” Okay, I said. We changed the filter. The ceiling fans blew the warm air around. The guest room never cooled off, Michael and Caroline finally opened the windows. When we rode downtown with them the next day they had the car air-conditioning on full blast.

It seemed to cool off for a few days. The house seemed comfortable. In my home maintenance dreamworld, in which things really aren’t so bad, I postpone calling service people. In early August the mercury inched up again, then shot into the mid-90s. The sun beat down, the flowers wilted. The neighborhood pool water warmed to bathtub temperature. I had seen Five Star Heating and Air Conditioning on a nearby street. I looked them up and dialed.

Jason, the technician, was at the house the next day. When he finished his inspection we sat in the living room perspiring. “I can’t in good conscience try to fix the system,” he said. “Your condenser isn’t compatible with the evaporator coil on the inside unit. They use different coolants. The one in the condenser is obsolete. Someone did a bad job here.”

I showed him a 2017 invoice for a “2,000-pound AC unit” from a sole proprietor we had found in a kitchen drawer when we moved in. Jason looked at it. “I never heard of this guy,” he said. “This was a ripoff.”

We pieced together the story. The previous homeowner, an elderly widow, had moved to a nursing home about four years ago. The house sat unoccupied through those years. A nephew took care of the yardwork and presumably other maintenance. When the AC failed he, or someone, hired the sole proprietor to make a minimal, low-cost fix. He installed a condenser not compatible with the rest of the system and added the wrong coolant. The system never worked.

“You need a whole new system, condenser, evaporator coil, coolant. The furnace is part of it. We can do that for you. Our ‘comfort adviser’ can discuss it with you if you’re interested.”

An hour later Devin, the “comfort adviser,” rang the doorbell. He was a foot taller than Jason but crawled into the attic to look at the unit. He echoed Jason’s verdict. “The system can’t be fixed,” he said. “We can do all the work next Friday. Two options, one is $9,600, the other is $8,500.” Sandy jumped in. “We’ll get the cheaper one. Is there a senior discount?” she asked. “I can take off five percent,” Devin said. We said OK. I handed him my credit card.

The days grew hotter through the week we waited for the Five Star crew. The temperature inside rose to 90F. Some days I took three showers. Kyle and Ed arrived at 8:00 AM Friday. They disconnected the old system, dragged it out and threw it in their truck, and hauled in the shiny new coils box and furnace. The equally shiny new condenser went around the back.

Through the day they worked in the backyard and the attic, hammering, soldering, running wiring, while guzzling ice water. I cringed to think of the sauna-like heat of the attic. Around 6:00 PM, while we waited, hoping nothing went wrong, they switched on the new system. We felt a thrill of rushing, chilling air. They climbed down from the attic, drenched and dripping. Kyle showed us how to use the newfangled digital thermostat with the glow-in-the-dark symbology. We shook hands, they ran for their air-conditioned truck.

The next day I dug out our homebuyer’s inspection report. “The HVAC system is aged and will need to be replaced within five years,” the inspector had written. “It should be checked by a certified contractor.” We didn’t quite get five years. We didn’t get five months. Well, that’s over, I told myself. I took a deep, cool breath.