Lighter, Cooler, Don’t Hit That Button

I wound up taking yesterday off to have the evap coil in the air handler replaced.  I wanted to be onsite for the work, just in case.  I had requested Sam, the same guy that made the visit on Monday do the work because I had a good experience.  Sam showed up with the new coil around 9AM.  Unlike last time where I basically hung out with him the entire time,  I just told him to let me know if he needed anything and let him roll.  Normally overcast and rainy weather is something I don’t enjoy however yesterday being that was actually worked out well, it kept the temperature in the house down while the AC was offline for roughly four hours.

Unlike the old evap core which had steel as one of it’s major components, the new unit was made out of aluminum.  One of the biggest advantages is aluminum does not rust. The steel rusting was what led to the hole in the original coil.  Sam had a few bumps along the way he had to work through but in the end he got the unit back up and running in the four hours it was predicted to take.

At the end of the visit I was a bit stumped as I saw a sheriff’s deputy in our driveway, talking to Sam.  I wasn’t quite sure what was going on but didn’t want to inject myself unnecessarily.  When the deputy left Sam came in and told me that he somehow managed to accidentally trigger the Emergency SOS feature on his Iphone.  Doing so evidently contacts local police and gives them immediate GPS coordinates.  I never knew this was a thing and either did Sam.  He said the guy asked if he was in trouble or if anyone in the house was in trouble. Of course no trouble existed.  The officer said that accidental emergency SOS signals are sort of common, which is activated by default if you rapidly hit either side button 5 times.

Once the AC system was back on you could quickly feel the humidity getting sucked out of the living space.  I paid the almost $1500 bill without much trepidation, hoping that it will be money well spent to extend the life of my system a number of more years.

Of course I didn’t want to spend the day tapping my toe, waiting for the AC work to be done.  I kept busy with some small projects in the hobby room and then worked on the garage style door in the large shed.  My intent was to make it seal tightly so once I catch any remaining palm rats they are no longer able to get in there.  The door had a hard plastic seal at the bottom.  Upon observation I saw that it was gnawed away at either corner.  I cut out the remaining seal and installed a rubber one that isn’t as thick, which hopefully means the metal part of the door will be closer to the floor, giving a hard barrier the rodents can not penetrate.

I also rerouted a power cable I have running into the shed.  When I installed it a couple years ago I was lazy and just ran it under that same door.  I now drilled a inch hole in the floor that I routed the cable through and then filled the gap with pipe insulation, similar to what I had done in the small shed awhile ago.  My hope is this combination of changes with make the large shed no longer accessible as a palm rat Air BnB.

I also took some time to record a video that was requested of me by a number of people.  Somehow I have assumed the role of one of the people that promote/talk about safe/responsible PEV riding in the community.  There was a race in NYC a couple weeks ago that showed an insane disregard for the well being of others.  I won’t get into much detail here as I lay it all out in the video.  When I do these sort of talks I am very mindful of not falling into emotional rants.

This weekend the grass is going to need to get mowed again, this time with blades that are not beaten to a pulp.  I have some smaller tasks as always to keep me hopping.  I need to do some serious vacation usage before the middle of August.  I have over three weeks remaining.  I will likely opt to sell one of those weeks back which I will receive pay for.  The other two weeks I would like to use to extend the length of my weekends between now and then.  Ever since Cindy and I stopped doing extended road trips, using all of my vaca time allocated each year has been challenging.