There's one big drawback to buying older houses. You don't always have all of the modern conveniences already in place, and sometimes they are very expensive to install after the fact. I told myself that the first big ticket item I would buy once my commission checks started rolling in was going to be central air conditioning. My house was built in 1959, when such a thing was not standard. At some point, an owner of this house had it installed, with ducting and vents in all of the upstairs rooms, and a large, heavy compressor unit went on the roof. Before the house was sold to us, the by-then non-functioning compressor unit was removed from the roof, and a new roof was installed, new decking sealing over where the old air conditioner had been located. (This also happens to be the event we believe caused the damage to the valley beam in the roof supports over the garage. We are pretty sure someone dropped the old a/c compressor on the trusses when they removed it, and didn't check to see how much damage they did. I discussed this at length in 2015, when we bought the house.) I don't know even now how much a new compressor would have been, but I had been budgeting in my mind about 7 grand for the unit. I hadn't factored in the associated costs, of either hoisting a new unit onto the roof, piercing the roof, and reconnecting to the existing ducts, or the alternative of pouring a concrete pad for a heat pump outside, and whatever extensive work would have to be done to run a line into the house, install some sort of exchanger in the attic, and connect to the existing ducts. Let's just say that my imaginary number of 7,000 dollars was probably way off to add central air to my cute little vintage ranch. Add into that the fact that I had my life fall apart, including not making a single commission (or any other paycheck) for over a year, and you see why the air conditioner never went in.
Flash forward to a month and a half ago, when I finally closed on a house and saw my bank account balance shoot up for the first time in way too long. I started making concrete plans on where the money would shuffle to, and quickly had to face facts that my based-on-nothing-but-dreams budget was way off. I didn't want to give up all the things that more-than-$7k would buy. I really didn't need to cool the entire house. The upstairs here is maybe 1200 square feet, and the basement stays cold year round. It seemed less and less interesting to me to shell out the cost of the whole system. I started looking again at portable air conditioners. I dismissed them out of hand last year, thinking that I couldn't use a window unit because I have sideways slider windows, not up and down sash ones. I never even knew that floor models existed, because I never needed to know. Then I actually looked while I was at a Home Depot one day, and realized that I could get a small one for under $300, and it would be enough to cool my bedroom, and it wouldn't have anything in the window other than a fat vent hose and panel. It was quite a switch, from approaching 5 digits to a few hundred bucks.
Last year was one giant hot flash for me. I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a "woman of a certain age." I look younger than my years, and the reaction I get from people who learn how old I really am appeases my vanity. But in all truth, I am in the throws of menopause, and I barely survived it last year. No air conditioning, a body battling autoimmune disease that lacks the ability to sweat, and a world full of stress. If you added it all up, I think I got about seven hours of sleep total last summer. I've crested over that horrible mountain, and the flashes are starting to subside, but I am not about to take any chances on another summer like the last one. In the twenty minutes or so since I started writing, since Mr S-P got the a/c installed and running, my room has cooled from 77 degrees to 74 and I am already much happier. I have a remote control with a sleep timer, and I plan on having a very good summer.
I might also poke fun at the non-native English on the instructions just a little bit...
No comments:
Post a Comment