All posts by Duf

Last night I had a dream where I was at dinner with Cindy and heard music playing in the distance, loud enough to be annoying.  Mid-dream I awoke and swore I heard music in the bedroom.  My first thought was a neighbor for some reason was playing music loudly at 2AM??  I walked out into the main living space and didn’t really hear anything.  I went to the front door to see if I heard anything outside, I didn’t.

So I shrugged my shoulders and went back to the bedroom but heard the music again, getting louder as I approached the AC intake vent which is on a wall shared with the garage. WTF?  I walk out in the garage and see the culprit, our old Echo Show which I put out there awhile ago so I had music in the garage if needed.  For some unknown reason it had started to play Pandora in the middle of the night.  There has been one other case of this unit playing music inexplicably,  perhaps it is all part of Jeff Bezos grand plan to take over the world.

Cindy of course woke up as well and was also in the middle of a dream where she heard music, funny.

So I mentioned previously how I was throwing around the crazy idea of selling my practically brand new Model Y to Carvana to take advantage of exploding demand for used vehicles, especially Teslas.  However Carvana would only do a “manual appraisal” and was requesting things that I thought were stupid so I walked away from the process.  Yesterday morning just for the hell of it I decided to see what Vroom, one of Carvana’s competitors would offer me.  Unlike Carvana, I was not required to jump through additional hoops or a manual appraisal.  When I saw the number in my email I did a double take, $49,000.

When this thought process started 10-14 days ago, $10,000 was the number in my head I set where I would be stupid to not take advantage of this opportunity.  That opportunity that seemed ridiculous at first was now a reality.  They were offering me $10,000 more than the list price of the car, this is insane.  When I told Cindy about this at first she wasn’t enthusiastic.  Like me, she loves the Tesla and didn’t understand why I would even entertain the idea of selling it.  However when I painted the master plan for her she got onboard.

With getting that much combined with what I owe on the car I had the ability to BUY the next level up of a Model Y, the LR (long range), without spending a single penny out of pocket while keeping my car payment the same.  The LR has some huge advantages like a bigger battery that offers nearly 100 miles more range, AWD with a motor in the front and back and more speed with a 0-60 time of less than 5 seconds.  I made the decision to go for it.

In the span of 30 minutes I had done the first electronic document signing with Vroom and then immediately went onto Tesla and ordered myself ANOTHER Model Y which only required a $100 deposit for now.  Vroom is supposed to be overnighting some more documents I need to sign and return.  After that a pickup of the car is scheduled and once Vroom inspects the car the funds will be transferred to my bank account.  It seems crazy that you can conduct a 50k transaction without even talking to another human being but that is the world we live in.

Part of the deal is the odometer can’t have more than 250 more miles on it than what I reported so the Model Y is now parked in the garage, where it will remain until it is picked back up.  I need to give it a quick bath and remove the small upgrades I have done to the car since I have owned it.  The 2016 Tacoma will now become my daily driver until I take possession of my NEXT Model Y which as of this point is supposed to happen sometime in September.  This has truly been a bizarre set of circumstances and it will be a bit sad to not have a Tesla for a few months but the reality that a newer, bigger, faster one is being built for me will help temper that sadness.

I have neglected to talk about the horrific partial collapse of the Surfside condo on the other coast.  It has to be a horrible feeling for those rescue workers knowing that only 10% of the missing people have been recovered at this point.  The task ahead of them is gruesome.  The neglect that appears to have been connected to the building collapse seems pretty ridiculous as is the requirement to have buildings certified only every 40 years.  I have a feeling this horrible tragedy is going to affect the way building safety is handled from here on out.  There are a TON of people on the east coast living in old condo buildings, I guarantee they are all feeling a lot more nervous and paranoid now.

There is a tropical storm named after our beloved dog, Elsa, brewing in the Caribbean.  Right now the forecast cone puts our area right in the middle of the predicted path.  However if I have learned anything since living in Florida it’s that predictions made 4 to 5 days in advance of a hurricane rarely, if ever turn out to be accurate.  The other positive is since we are still early in the season, the system is predicted to stay at tropical storm strength which can still be quite nasty but nothing like a cat 3+ hurricane that starts ripping things out of the ground.

Since July 4th is Sunday, I have Monday off as well.  In addition I put in for two more extended weekends, working on using up my remaining vacation time before it resets in mid-August.  This weekend I have nothing huge and ridiculous like laying sod on the menu but there will still be plenty to keep me hopping.

I have been recovering from the tolls spreading four pallets of ratty bahia sod had taken on my body.  My legs/knees are still hurting and I have welts on my feet and arms from the fire ants that were hiding inside some of the sod sections.  I did return to the gym yesterday, doing chest work but I definitely did not feel strong, falling short of my recent PRs with the smith machine press.

I saw the news that the PA supreme court overturned Bill Cosby’s conviction for raping one of many women.  It wasn’t overturned because anyone thought he was innocent, hell he admitted to the assaults himself.  The decision was based on a technicality from a civil suit that was filed against Cosby where in return for a more favorable outcome in that case for himself, he was told that if he admitted to the assault he would never be criminally tried for that admission, which seems like insanity to most people, a deal that should have never been offered.  So basically, to make more money in the civil case, one of the women’s lawyers struck this deal.  The end result of this is a lifetime sexual predator now gets to go free and can not be tried again for the crimes he has admitted to.  Of course people are outraged as this end result is pretty disgusting.  I was almost as disgusted by Bill’s TV wife Phylicia Rashad applauding the court decision.  Does she actually think Cosby deserved no punishment for his sexual abuse of at least 60 women? Come on….

The sod did arrive on Monday albeit at the very end of the day, he rolled in close to 5PM.  As I was standing in the yard at the spot I wanted the first pallet dropped at I noticed the driver was having some issues with the loader that is attached to the back of the truck.  He started to lower it but then the engine on the loader died.  He kept starting it only to have it die a few seconds later.  After watching the scenario play out I walked over and asked what was up.  He said the loader is out of gas.  The issue is the loader was now partially undocked from the truck so the truck can’t be moved.  I was a bit in disbelief that the guy wouldn’t check the fuel level on the loader before coming. I didn’t see any other options so I told him I would run to the gas station and buy 5 gallons of diesel fuel.

I returned with the fuel which he dumped in the huge tank.  The loader fired right up and we were  in business.  I was getting four skids in total.  I wanted to put two by the mound in the front and two in the back on the side of the house near the pool equipment.  I had some concerns about the loader with a pallet of grass doing a number on the yard but it actually left very minimal imprints. I acted like a human flag, directing and then standing where I wanted the pallets placed.  My goal was to keep them as close as possible to where the sod was going to be placed. Despite the gas fck up and later than promised arrival I still gave the guy a tip which he seemed surprised by.  I appreciate people that do labor for a living, an appreciation deepened by experiences like what followed.

So despite it being around 5:30 I wanted to get started spreading sod.  I had already made arrangements to take Tuesday off as well so I could complete the work.  So the pallets were at the base of the house mound, the bare dirt areas were mostly on the top of the mound.  I brought the wheelbarrow out front thinking a solid plan would be to load sod in there and cart it to the spot I was laying it to save back and forth trips.  This plan failed miserably.

I have once placed a full pallet of sod however it was thick floritam grass which holds together well when cut into squares.  Bahia is the opposite.  Bahia is what we used last year for the ground leveling project, it is a native grass which is ideal because during dry season it goes dormant, unlike floritam which will completely die and turn to dust if you are not watering it all the time.  However bahia when you get it looks like shit, like a big pile of mostly dead weedy grass.  However the real problem is the squares fall apart.  I mean really fall apart.  I bet on each pallet at least half of the pieces were disintegrated.

So anyway, with my wheelbarrow plan I would pick up the pieces of sod that were falling apart and plop them in there.  I them pushed the heavy cart up the incline and then tried to pull the pieces out a second time, making them fall apart even worse.  At times I was pulling out small clumps of sod not much bigger than my hand.  It was maddening.  To top things off it was still humid as hell and the gnats were driving me insane.  I f’d around out there until about 7:30, taking almost two hours just to do one pallet.  I was miserable, knowing that I had that amount of work x 3 to get done on Tuesday.

I let my normal work alarm go off Tuesday.  After cleaning and filling the chicken water and eating breakfast I was straight outside, somewhere around 7:30 AM.  I took two advil up front, knowing what I was going to be subjecting my body to.  I shit canned the wheelbarrow idea, just making endless back and forth trips holding shitty sod pieces that were falling apart.  Despite dramatically increasing the amount of steps in the process it definitely took less time overall doing it this way.  By the time I threw the last ratty, small piece of sod in place it was right around 11:30.  My body felt awful and I had an armor made of a mixture of sweat and dirt. I was disgustingly dirty.

After a quick shower Cindy headed out with me in the truck.  I had to return the four broken wooden pallets to get my $40 deposit back and I wanted to pick up a sod roller to press the bahia down as much as possible.  The driver told me he was going to tell the office about my buying the fuel so they could reimburse me for that as well.  When I mentioned the fuel purchase they knew nothing about it but gave me a $20 bill for the trouble without any fuss.  The sod roller pick up went smoothly as well.

When we got back I filled the roller with water and got busy, despite there being a steady light rain coming down.  The limited slip differential in the Husqvarna tractor came in handy in these conditions, able to pull the heavy roller back and forth over the wet sod without much issue at all.  I zig zagged across the areas repeatedly, hoping to give the sod the best chance to take hold and fill these areas where now dead floritam used to occupy.  I finished up and immediately took the roller back to Home Depot within four hours, meaning the rental only cost $15, one of the few reasonably priced parts of this project.

The rest of the day was spent recovering, it was the most grueling project I can recall in quite awhile.  Probably the last time I had to bust it that hard was when I did the fencing around the chicken area.  My lower body, back, and hands are all quite sore today.  Of course as I was slogging through the pallets I thought how much better it was when I paid Miguel’s crew $25 per pallet to lay it down.  Unfortunately I cut ties with him after he never finished the scope of work he was supposed to.  However I made myself a promise that I would never spread another pallet of bahia grass myself.  I will make sure whomever I get it from next time can lay it down as well.

WoW released a new patch yesterday meaning I have lots to keep my recreational plate full for awhile.

I am going to speed through my four day weekend recap which has yet to finish it’s fourth day, because I feel like it.

On Friday I got all of the grass maintenance out of the way, weed whacking and mowing the property.  The humidity made it as enjoyable as waterboarding.  Friday evening I did my first live stream in a long time.  It went long as it normally does.  I had my bud Marty on for a good portion of the stream where we covered a number of subjects.  I also gave away a bunch of stuff, probably more than I should have.  It totaled up to 14 items that wound up costing me $75-100 to ship it all.  It still was a good time.

On Friday I also pulled the trigger on buying four pallets of bahia sod.  There are a number of bare dirt patches in the yard, the side effect of trying to fill them in the past with floritam sod that doesn’t survive dry season without ridiculous amounts of watering.  Bahia just goes dormant during dry season and will be a much better and more reasonable fit for the yard.  The sod may be delivered today, laying down four pallets of sod myself is not something I am looking forward to.

On Saturday I noticed that Popcorn was again acting sluggish.  Her backside was a mess.  I once again soaked her and then cleaned her off.  She was still not normal on Sunday so she got the finger again. Again I didn’t feel any egg in there.  My hope was doing the finger last time seemed to give her some relief so it was worth trying again.  I am practically a chicken proctologist at this point.

On Saturday night Deb visited again.  We finally introduced her to the world of VR and she loved it.  Cindy and her played a bunch of rounds of Beat Saber and then I showed her one of the Star Wars Immortal games.  Being a huge Star Wars fan, she found the experience pretty amazing.  I expect that she will be buying a headset of her own sometime soon.

I added yet another Ring device to the coop on Saturday, covering the west side of the coop area, which was unmonitored since I pulled the DVR system.  That brings the total amount of Ring cameras in the household up to 10.  I also went around and placed flags by the sprinkler heads in the spots I am going to add sod to make sure I don’t inadvertently bury any.

Mid Sunday morning Jeremiah stopped by.  A couple months ago he stopped by the house to say hi to Cindy, he lives a few blocks away and started riding an EUC.  He had seen my videos and thought it was ironic that I was right around the corner.  I made arrangements to have him stop over to test ride my wheels.  He has only ridden his KingSong 14D, a fun but very small wheel with limited speed and range.

I let him ride almost everything I have, including the One Wheels.  We even rode to the new DD to give him some more ride time.  He liked all of the wheels and adapted very quickly to riding them, despite them being much different than what he has.  I could tell he has more natural riding ability than I have.  He has an interesting background and currently sells solar systems.  I anticipate we will get out to ride together more often.

Last night Cindy and I watched The Silencing, what I assume was a straight to Blu-Ray release.  It was a cool thriller with the King Slayer from Game of Thrones as the main character.  I’d give it a B+  We fell asleep watching some show about a realtor that sells properties to nudists in the Tampa Bay area.  Evidently there are a number of nudist communities up there.  The visuals are pretty insane as you see naked people washing cars, mowing the grass, playing tennis, doing yoga and even jogging.  I just don’t understand how it is enjoyable to have that stuff swinging and bouncing around without protection.

We will see how the rest of today pan’s out, I have to drop Sadie back off at Ali’s place and then what happens from there depends on if the sod delivery happens today or not. After doing the budget work this week it is clear that I need to find  a few months of more normalized spending to get my numbers where I want them.  The trip to KSC, AC repair and now sod purchase has hit the CC bill hard.

Shortages and inflation have been hitting all sorts of industries in the last year, a side effect of the global lockdowns from covid and the slow recovery process.  I mean everything is more expensive, food, fuel, building materials, electric unicycles and used cars.  Yes, used cars are going UP in price.  In particular I had heard how used Teslas were going up in value.  A used car normally does nothing but go down in value however scarcity, rising gas prices and long wait times for new Teslas have pushed the used Tesla market skyward.

My coworker has a 2019 Model 3, almost exactly like I had.  When he got a trade in number from Tesla it wasn’t all that impressive, only 27K, perhaps because Tesla demand is so high they don’t have much need to be generous with trade values.  However when he punched his car into Carvana, he got a trade value of almost 37k, a huge difference and only a few thousand off what he paid for the car new two years ago.

So as he was in there he happened to look at what Model Y’s Carvana had in stock.  There were only three of them and two of them were the standard range model similar to mine.  When he told me to look at them I could not believe the numbers I saw.  Each car was priced in the 58-59k range, what the hell?  The list price on my car was 39k and my actual cost after everything was in the low 40’s.  Could this be real?

For the hell of it I logged into my Carvana account and tried to get a value on my car.  The system was unable to give me one, perhaps because of the crazy market conditions.  I was directed to call and talk to one of their appraisers directly which I may do today.  Now the odds that I would do anything are extremely slim. However if they would offer me 10k over what I paid for the vehicle I would consider it strongly.  Now the reality would be if I did that it would have to be with the understanding that until market conditions settle, I just wouldn’t be able to replace the car.  I would be relegated to driving the Tacoma full time, which wouldn’t be the end of the world. So anyway, it at least will be interesting to see what sort of number I would be offered.  Regardless, if you are looking to get the maximum value selling/trading in your vehicle, now is the time to do so, without question.

Last night Cindy and I played some Beat Saber and minigolf in VR.  My Beat Saber skills were rusty, Cindy crushed me worse than she normally does.  She is exceptionally good in a rhythm game like this.  Minigolf was fun, we played a new course which was situated in outer space.  The game is just so well done, it’s really immersive and enjoyable.  The immersion is so complete that I repeatedly find myself reaching for the virtual railings to lean on while I wait my turn.

I have been creating another custom piece of 3D printed gear, a headlight cover for the Veteran Sherman.  I call it the Full Face Headlight Helmet or FFHH for short.  The design went through 6 or 7 iterations until I got it where I want it.  Like the Exo-Armor that I released earlier, I will sell these on the store but I also released the file publicly so those with 3D printers can print it themselves.  That of course isn’t the best move to maximize revenue but I look at it as just a nice way to give back to the community.

Speaking of the community, one of the things I plan on doing during my four day weekend is hosting another live stream, something I have not done in a while.  It is scheduled for Friday night.  I am sure much of the talk will be focused on the insane and dangerous riding in the “alleycat” race as well as my video about it.  It should be fun regardless.

The rest of the weekend will have some tasks/chores of course but hopefully not to an overbearing degree.

I forgot to mention that over the weekend I was in VR playing some miniature golf against random people.  One of the guys said he loved playing real golf and found the physics in VR golf amazingly accurate.  He told me of a crazy experiment he did.  When you set up in VR you map out your virtual play space on the floor.  You can only move around in this boundary, if you approach the edge of it you will see the virtual wall, alerting you.  Of course this is designed to keep you from inadvertently hurting yourself or breaking something.

Well this guy told me he took his Quest outside and drew a HUGE boundary.  By doing so he was able to play the golf game and walk around the course almost normally.  He said it felt amazingly realistic.  It sounds like a fun thing to try out.  Maybe during my extended weekend I will make a big outdoor boundary and see what sort of trouble I can get into.

I also have been forgetting to mention a situation with a mockingbird.  We are in active nesting season so the mama birds are protective of their babies.  A couple weeks ago I had Elsa outside to go to the bathroom.  As Elsa was in her squat position pushing one out a mockingbird dive bombed her, poking her in the butt.  Elsa jumped three feet and came running back inside.  It looked hilarious of course.

Well since then the bird has caught on that Elsa is now scared of her.  Anytime Elsa is on that side of the house the mockingbird comes shooting out, trying to scare Elsa away.  I now act as Elsa’s bodyguard.  If the bird starts moving towards her I move towards it aggressively and it backs off, but not too far.  Cindy has found it less and less funny as the bird doesn’t seem to be as wary of Cindy as it is of me.  I told her once the babies are out of the nest the mama bird should move on.  Until then I have been trying to walk Elsa on the other side of the house or stick to her like glue if we are in the dive bomb zone.

Today is the second 24 hours of Prime Day.  Prime Day has lost some of it’s impact over the years.  I have not bought a single thing.  As I perused the site, looking at the deals, I thought to myself that if I have to hunt through pages of deals, I really don’t need anything.

Although I am no longer running I got a decent amount of cardio in on Friday.  At lunch I did my parking garage 5K which entails walking from our office to the six story parking garage and climbing it up and down twice in a S type fashion.  With the heat and humidity it was a bit of a sweatfest.  Then when I got home I did a 20 minute live cycle class that used a tabata format.  I was drenched.  Neither of these activities give the same sense of accomplishment that running does but it allows me to elevate my heart rate and burn calories without the impact penalty on my joints that I can no longer tolerate.

As I mentioned last week, the grass has been growing like mad since rain has returned in earnest.  While Cindy was out at an appointment Saturday I got on the tractor with it’s fresh set of blades.  I have had my tractor canopy off for awhile because it is a bit screwed up, meaning my sun protection has been relegated to my ridiculously oversized straw hat.  It keeps the sun off my face and neck but not a lot else.  I was broiling during the two hour session.  The new blades did a great job of delivering an even and clean cut.

As I was finishing up Deb came over for an earlier than normal visit.  A little later DJ was dropped off for us to watch while Katie ran some errands.  DJ seemed to take a liking to Deb which was cute.  Even with three of us, DJ can be a handful to keep safe, entertained, and under surveillance.  Late in the visit all of us were outside.  I brought my one EUC out and started riding around the back yard.  DJ started chasing me incessantly, he thought it was the coolest thing.  If I stopped to let him catch up he would bend down and point to the foot pedal, meaning he wanted me to ride some more. I swear I had the kid running around for nearly 20 minutes, it was funny.

Saturday night we had some alcohol which led to the normal degree of silliness.  At some point Cindy and Deb were referencing scenes in Flashdance that I had not seen.  Thanks to the wonders of Prime Video I was able to launch the movie within seconds.  Deb watched about half of it with us and Cindy and I finished it after she left.  It confirmed that although of course I had heard of the movie, I never actually watched it.  It was entertaining, silly and had surprising nudity.

Sunday was Father’s Day.  I already told Cindy I had no major projects planned for the day which she was glad to hear.  Really outside of taking care of the chickens first thing, the rest of the day was chore free.  Mid-afternoon we met up with Deb for a ride around the golf course again.  We brought two vehicles that had not been there yet, my Veteran Sherman and Cindy’s Dualtron scooter.  Cindy had a blast zipping around the curves and hills on the powerful scooter.  The Sherman with it’s high power was fun too but I did miss the softer ride the suspension wheels give me on that terrain.  It was so freaking hot and humid though, we didn’t stay as long as I would have liked.

Speaking of hot and humid, it has been so nice to have the AC performing to normal levels again.  The difference between outdoors and indoor is drastic.  I actually had to bump the thermostat up a bit last night because I was “cold”.  I also am curious how my energy consumption is affected by having the until being able to drop into low power mode to maintain temp instead of screaming like a banshee all the time, trying to keep up with the cooling demands.

I called my dad during the day to catch up and wish him a happy Father’s Day.  I was curious how his reinsertion into the workforce since May had been going.  As I would assume, he isn’t thrilled with all aspects of it and he dropped some clues that made it seem this may not be a very long term experiment.  I have been wondering if my dad and step mom have given any consideration to adopting another dog to fill the huge void left by the passing of Maggie and Clara.  I haven’t had the heart to ask.

I finished up my Father’s Day with a spaghetti dinner and some time in WoW.  All in all it was a pretty excellent day.  I am going to start chewing through my excessive vacation starting this week.  I am taking off Friday and Monday.

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.

Yesterday the AC company gave me a window of arrival of between 1 and 5PM.  I asked for the tech to call my cell to let me know when he was on his way so I could meet him at the house.  Around 2:30 I called in for a status update, they said the tech still had two customers ahead of me.  It was clear if the tech made the window at all, it wouldn’t be till the very end of it.  Well that wasn’t the case.

Of course anyone that knows me relatively well knows that I really dislike people/companies that over promise and under deliver.  To their credit, the AC company called me around 4:30, letting me know the tech was still going to be there, it was just going to be late.  That simple communication helped to dull the edge of my aggravation.  The clock continued to tick.  I got a call from the tech named Sam about 6:20, saying he was just leaving the office in Bonita, he should be there in 35 minutes.  Geez, ok.

The van pulled into the driveway around 7PM.  It took me very little time to figure out that I liked this guy.  You could tell he actually gave a shit about fixing my issue.  I described the history of the unit and what has been happening lately.  The first thing he did was act on my question of if the ducts in the attic were possibly leaking.  He climbed up in the attic and did a thorough inspection, spending at least 15 minutes crawling around.  He said for the most part things looked good although he did find a mechanical damper that was not fully open which would restrict air flow to some areas of the house.  He wasn’t sure why it was there but he opened it fully to maximize air flow.

Sam did a temperature check in the air handler, measuring the air temp below and above.  Normally there should be around 20 degree difference, my unit had only a 14 degree difference, not good.  I explained how it seemed like the variable speed fan in the blower was cranking at top speed all weekend, trying to keep up.  These symptoms pointed to low refrigerant level in the system.  He went out to the compressor to get some readings and found the level was indeed low, very low.  Capacity for the Trane unit is around 10lbs of coolant, the tech had to add 6lbs to get it up to that number.  So it was clear, there is a leak.

I mentioned to Sam that to lose that much, you would think it had been leaking for awhile.  I questioned why during the PM in January it wasn’t noticed?  He didn’t have a solid answer for that.  So once the refrigerant was added he had to figure out where the leak was.  To do this he used a cool ultrasonic tester that “listens” for leaks.  He opened up the air handler and started sniffing around.  He got a hit on the back of the coil, a clear leak.

He explained to me that many leaks can be patched, and if this leak was on the front of the coil he would have tried to do so right there.  However since the leak is in the back the entire coil would need to be pulled from the air handler, hopefully patched and then reinstalled.  The coils were very rusty and the issue is there is no guarantee that another hole won’t open up because of the condition of the unit.  That immediately sounded like a bad option as my desire is to get the issue fixed for the longer term.  That fix means replacing the coil unit entirely.

Sam went to his van and got together the bill for the service call and the estimate to replace the coil.  Because I have a service contract the majority of the service bill was to pay for the refrigerant which costs $35 a pound.  The estimate to replace the coil was steep as expected, around $1500, but a worthwhile repair based on longevity I still am hoping to get out of the system.  The part needs to be ordered today. Hopefully they can get it within a few days.  I asked Sam if I could request that he is the tech to do the swap out, he said I could.  I latch onto people in the service industry that pay attention to detail, are thorough, and give a damn about what they do.  Sam demonstrated he was all of those things to me.  By the time he left around 9PM he had turned around my negativity about the late appointment by doing his job well.

I could instantly tell a difference inside the house with the system once again having normal cooling power.  Sam said with as low as the levels were was there was a lot of humidity that was not getting pulled out of the indoor air.  I look forward to moving forward with a solid AC solution once again, a necessity for brutal Florida summers.  Who knows how long this leak has been going on, however a side effect in addition to the poor cooling performance also is a lot more power usage.  Lower electricity usage should be nice, blunting the effect of the $1500 on my wallet.  Of course this failure occurred about 9 months after my 10 year warranty expired, right on time….