AC

So the AC repair guy came out yesterday.  In fact they called about 10 minutes into my gym workout so I had to cut it short and haul ass back to the office and then back to the house.  I gave him a brief history of the unit.  He grabbed the copper pipe and could instantly tell it was not cold enough.  They did some readings and determined the freon level was somewhat low although not terribly so.  He added about 2 pounds of coolant. 

The tech said that basically I need to monitor the system and see if it’s cooling performance degrades quickly.  If it does, then a leak test needs to be run which costs another couple hundred bucks.  If it is a tiny leak it may be ok for quite awhile considering it has run 8 years without having anything added to it.  After the freon was added he tested the air coming out of the handler, it was a chilly 61 degrees so the unit is still cooling well.  Once they were done the house started to cool down much better.

I also told the tech how I have a variable thermostat installed.  I mentioned that I let the temp go up to 82 during the day and then cool down to 77 after we get home.  He advised that there is no more than 3 degree swing in daytime versus nighttime settings.  Otherwise the amount of work the unit has to do to cool down the house will negate any benefit from the higher setting.  I may actually be using more electric having the thermostat at 82 instead of 80 during the day.  I made that change after they left.  The cost for the visit, $149. $89 for the service call and $60 for 2 pounds of coolant.  Now it’s up to me to keep an eye on how the system cools to see if we have a leak that needs to be addressed.

Yesterday I went out to the party van and stripped off the rust from the various spots on the drip rail.  My plan is to strip it to bare metal, prime the area and then just paint over it with some white paint to make it look a little better.  This is all in prep for the master plan of unloading the party van on some body looking to carry lots of people for little money (ie. Mexicans).   My hope is to sell the van for a couple grand and buy another conversion van, a newer one this time,  maybe a late 90’s model instead of an early 90’s model.

 The party van would also qualify for the new Cash for Clunkers program.  Unfortunately a SS Camaro does NOT qualify for any money back.  If I went for the V6 model I could get $3500 for the van.  If we bought something even more fuel efficient it would bring $4500 to the table.

I forgot to mention I played some Wii sports with my mom over the weekend.  She did pretty well holding her own in tennis.  She had a shocking upset in Wii Bowling when I bowled probably my lowest score ever and she rolled her best game ever.  I was having issues getting the Wii to consistently read my wrist snap which resulted in straight balls.  There is photo evidence of this historic event which I will try to get online soon.