it's hot, hot, hot

Here in North Carolina we've been having some hot weather of late. Most of the US east coast has been hit by this heat. Here we've had a week in which we've gone over 100F almost every day.

Unfortunately for me, my A/C system decided this was a good time to fail. It must have died sometime Monday night 'cause Tuesday morning it was a mite humid in the house. I didn't think anything of it at the time though.

When I got home from work late that afternoon the temperature was up to 82 in the house. I generally keep it around 77-78 so this was a bad sign.

By the end of the evening the heat and humidity got a lot worse.








Of course it was still a lot better on the inside of the house versus the outside.

As you can see there, the temp outside was 103.1 at 6pm and was still climbing a little. *whew*

My grass needs mowing but I'll tell you--I'd have to be nuts to cut it in this heat! I'll wait until this weekend when I can cut it in the morning when it's only 80F.

Why is it that the systems that we depend on fail us when we need them most? My A/C could have cut out a few months ago when the temps were in the low 80s and it'd not have had so much impact on my sense of well being. Damn machines!





On Wednesday the heat was about the same outside when I got home from work but unfortunately the lack of A/C for two days had the inside heating up earlier.

I took this picture around 6:40pm and it was 90F inside. Nasty! I stayed at work later than usual just to avoid coming home to the bloody heat.

I moved a fan downstairs from my storage room and watched television all night with that fan aimed straight at me. I only got up to make some grilled cheese and ham sandwiches. Yum.





This was the temp outside on Wednesday.

Very unpleasant! I even used the A/C in my car on the drive home. I don't usually do that since I don't like cold air directed right at my face--but the past few days I've developed a taste for it.

I don't see how people can live without A/C down here. The two days I spent waiting for the repair folk to have time to see me was more than enough time to realize that I never NEVER ever want to live without air conditioning!







This is what turned out to be the problem. The capacitor on my outside unit was fried. Took the guy 10 minutes to switch it out. He spent a while longer checking the system to make sure everything else was working fine-- and it was.



The capacitory cost me $45 plus the charge for the service call, which was $78. Had I known what was wrong I could have bought a capacitor myself at a site like Arnold's Service where it would have cost just $28--and no service charge.

But I had no clue what was wrong. Maybe next time!




Here's a picture of a good capacitor on the right and a bad one on the left. This was taken from the Arnold's site, but that's pretty much what mine looked like. The whole top part was bulged up. Poor thing.