The Quietest Air Conditioners

I recently got a new pet cat which I think is about eight months old and it is very shy.

It’s been hiding under my sofa now for over a week and I never see it when I am awake.

It must come out at night to eat and use the litter box because in the morning the food is gone and I have to clean the litter. Maybe it’s happier living like this but it is an odd way to have a pet cat don’t you think? I wonder how long it will go living under the sofa! I do yoga next to my sofa and can see the cat watching me from under it. I think I will wait one more week and if it still isn’t coming out then I will lift up the sofa and get it used to being near me and not hiding away completely. I also do my weight lifting in my living room because I grew tired of going to the local gym all of the time. I had a lot of fun and met a lot of people there but feel that I am better off doing my workout routines at home. A lot of my friends don’t do any exercising and some of them are severely overweight but that is how they choose to live and I don’t try to change them. I would love to give them all a good health plan to help them out but if they aren’t willing to do it then it’s pointless. Our choices decide our destiny, I choose life.

 

Personal Fitness Programs

I know this isn’t for everyone and there is nothing wrong with going to a class if you need direction and motivation

I used to go to the gym all the time for years but then thought about all of the money I was spending on it. I decided that I could make my own gym and do it anywhere I wanted for free. I think a lot of people just go to the gym because they think that is the only place you can workout but if you look around you there are a million places you can do it for free. I got tired of driving my car five times a week to the club to exercise so I stopped. Instead of going to yoga classes I just got on YouTube and found a good yoga routine and stuck to it. Now I can do my routine without needing to watch the video because it has been carved into my brain from doing it daily for 11 years. I saved a ton of money on yoga classes over the past 11 years and also saved another bunch of money on gas that I would have spent going to and coming from the yoga studio. I know this isn’t for everyone and there is nothing wrong with going to a class if you need direction and motivation. I have been a personal trainer for many years myself so maybe it is easier for me to workout on my own as I know what I am doing. I get most of my cardio from beach volleyball so I don’t need to worry about running all of the time to stay fit. Volleyball is the best!

 

Gym membership

I told him straight away that I was honored to work for him, and I would do whatever I could to learn the HVAC business his way

Some things are learned from books, and some things need to be learned through experience. However when you learn a trade, you need to do both. You have to learn by doing, but also study and read and learn as much as you can. No matter what trade you want to follow, there is nothing more beneficial to the process than finding a mentor. A mentor can guide you through the practicality of the job, leading by example and giving you the experience you need to succeed. In the world of HVAC, the tech is constantly evolving, so the workers need to evolve just as quickly. My mentor was an old, gruff man who called himself Ox, and was the sole proprietor of an HVAC repair shop. Ox didn’t do a lot of house calls anymore, and was looking to pass on his HVAC wisdom and possibly his business to someone younger. I told him straight away that I was honored to work for him, and I would do whatever I could to learn the HVAC business his way. Ox was a man of few words, and gave me three pieces of advice for learning the HVAC trade – be on time, pay attention, and don’t ask to go home. I followed those three rules religiously, and over the course of months learned more and more about heating and cooling systems. After a while he gave me an advance on my pay to sign up for the HVAC certification program, which at that point would be a cake walk for me!
steam boiler

My first job was in a shopping mall.

This was back in the late 80s, when shopping malls were giant, out of control behemoths the size of city blocks.

It was busy work, but a fun way to spend my evening and weekends and make a little spending money. One day a customer was rude to me, so I was rude back. When the manager demanded I apologize, I told him to go to hell and I quit. I was very proud of myself that day. It was that feeling of independence and power that drove me to getting my HVAC certification. I came to realize, not after that shopping mall job, that if I learned a specialized set of skills, as with HVAC repair, then I could have total control over my work. I would not have to eat crow, or mince my words, because my HVAC skills would give me value. That took some work, but I was bound and determined to get my HVAC certification and start looking for a good job. I could be freelance, and just pick up whatever work I could find, or I could go to work for an HVAC contractor for guaranteed pay and benefits. One day I plan on being my own HVAC contractor, but I still need years of experience to get to that point. Even when I do work for another HVAc contractor, I am still essentially my own boss, and won’t have to take any jobs I don’t want to. That kind of freedom is important to me.

 

a/c repairman

If you know the right person, you can get anything done.

Once I had a major car issue late at night on a Sunday, just before a holiday, and I thought I was screwed. A friend of mine said he knew a guy who could help me. After a quick phone call, I went to an overnight garage, where there was a full crew of car mechanics working graveyard shift. They were able to hook me up and I drove away within two hours… all because of knowing the right person. Some weeks ago I had a similar experience involving my central HVAC system, one that was only recently resolved. It seems that the previous owners to this house had managed their own HVAC system over the years. Instead of having it done by professionals, they had tinkered with the air conditioning and the furnace and modified them in their own ways. What this meant now, after many years of experimentation, was that the central HVAC system was a Frankenstein’s monster of parts and pieces from different systems. None of the HVAC techs I talked to would help me out, their own response was that I needed a completely new system. Finally I talked to a friend of a friend, who had his own history with custom-building air conditioners. He was a weirdo and a stoner, but was also amazing with breaking down and rebuilding old cooling systems. I still couldn’t afford a completely new HVAC system, I just needed this old rickety pile of junk to start working again!

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When I started this job, it was just a job.

Maybe you remember how it is – young, needing work, not really caring what that work is as long as it pays! I had no idea what I was doing on my first day, but the senior tech in charge was a good dude.

He pulled me aside and said to be quiet, to listen, and to pay attention to everything he and the other guys did. His name was Max, and he said if I worked hard and did as told, he would teach me how to be an HVAC tech like him. Max was an older guy, and had been in the HVAC industry for twenty years, but he was also a joker and a lunch-break toker, if you know what I mean. The point is that outside of work Max was a cool guy, and on the job he was a focused HVAC professional who always delivered top flight results. Although we got to be friends over time, I kept my perspective at work and stayed focused on learning as much as I could about HVAC systems. It took me weeks just to learn all the specialized tools they use on their ductwork jobs. Max was my mentor, and he always did right by me, until it got to the point he thought I was ready to get my HVAc certification and “step up to the big leagues” as he liked to say. Now I run my own HVAC work crew, and Max and I only see each other on weekends.

seer ratings

I will admit that this is more house than I really needed.

It was a great price, so even though it was a lot larger than I had planned for, I could not pass it up.

What could the down side be for having too big of a house, right? We know how bad it sucks to live in a space that is too small, but too large shouldn’t be any sort of problem. Well, it turns out I was mostly right, there aren’t a whole lot of problems that stem from having too much space… except for the utility bills. I need to crack down on my energy saving tip these days, because trying to pay the monthly bills for heating and cooling this place are driving me to the poorhouse! I had an HVAC tech come over and give the place an inspection, and he says that I will need two new systems. I about choked on my tongue when I heard that – two HVAC systems? He explained that the house was so big there were two complete HVAC systems in the house, one for the west wing, one for the east. I would really need to get both of them replaced, and he gave me a price quote of about twenty thousand bucks for everything I would need to get done. I thanked him, and then drove to the closest Walmart and bought a couple of space heaters and a couple of portable air conditioners. Until I win the lottery, I will have to make do with these smaller units of heating and cooling!

new hvac

Coming up with five thousand extra dollars is no small thing for a guy like me.

This economy is tight as a drum, everyone knows that.

The price of living is going up fast, the rate of pay is staying right where it is. It’s hard enough to make ends meet month-to-month, nonetheless saving up a few extra grand for my home repairs. If I would stop drinking beer and smoking weed I could save some money – yes I agree that is true – it still wouldn’t get me close enough to five thousand bucks! Instead I bought a $200 air conditioner from Walmart that is little, but can cool off one room very effectively. It plugs into a wall, is about the size of a space heater, and I can move it around with me when I go to a different room for a while. Is it anywhere near as nice as having a proper central HVAC system? Of course it isn’t. The portable air conditioner is a stop-gap measure, to fill the void until I can get a new central system. Since I am not saving up any money at all, the due date on that central system might be a few years from now. If anything, I might just buy a second one of these little A/C units, one for the bedroom and one for the living room. At least that way I wouldn’t have to keep lugging the air conditioner around with me when I go to bed. Now all I need to do is save up $200 for that.

 

home services

My girlfriend’s dad has become my best friend over the last few months.

• He and I never really got along before, and then we had a couple of crazy years, and somehow a friendship was forged.

I think of him as my father-in-law already. During COVID he lost his job, and because of his age they just pushed him into early retirement. He was pretty pissed about it, and then he discovered medical marijuana, and that’s when we started hanging out. He had worked as an HVAc repair tech for almost four decades, and now he was at loose ends about how to fill his time. He liked smoking pot, but missed having something meaningful to do. I told him flat out that my house was in dire need of a new central HVAC system, and that I would pay for all the materials if he did all the work. It took him a while, several weeks, and we spent a good portion of every day smoking pot, but finally he got my new climate control system working perfectly. I was genuinely impressed with his work, and started thinking about other HVAC based projects he could help me with. I also put him out on social media, asking friends and relatives if they needed any HVAC work done to send this guy a message. Personally I don’t know the first thing about air conditioners, but now that I have him in my life, I really don’t need to know anything! This guy works for free, and gets me stoned, too.

air conditioning

My kid thought we had ghosts in the attic.

I wish it was that simple! We moved into this remote farmhouse knowing that it was a fixer-upper, but we really didn’t know how much fixing was required.

The place had been empty for years, so while it had not been damaged, it had not been cared for in quite some time. My wife and I thought we could handle anything except for maybe the specialty work that would come later. Even though the central system was antique, the furnace in the basement still worked fine. Air conditioning would be a problem for another month, there were too many other things that needed fixing first. The first night there, little Jane said there were ghosts in the attic, but what she was hearing was the pitter-patter of squirrels in the air ducts. The ductwork had been infested with generations of squirrels while the house was empty. Thankfully they had never ventured down into the house itself, but all of the ductwork would need to be removed and replaced. That couldn’t happen until the ductwork was free of all living creatures, which was something none of us knew how to do. If we poisoned them or gassed them, then we just have air ducts jammed full of dead squirrels, which is not much better than what we have. We actually have no problem removing the ductwork and putting in the new set ourselves, but we are clueless about how to clear them out! Anyone have pointers on how to get squirrels out of ductwork?

heat pump installation