08-25-2025, 06:41 PM
A busy few weeks.
Just prior to our vacation to the Outer Banks to celebrate my wife's 60th birthday my A/C unit's compressor up and died. Had my son and his family in town during the outage and they were staying upstairs, so something had to be done. While we were away, we called around to have a couple companies come around to diagnose, hoping to have them fix it before we got back. Didn't work - took too long to get a replacement compressor and after the eventual replacement it appears that the whole outdoor unit was on its last legs.
I'd been debating a redo on my HVAC system in my house. When we built it, my builder was nearing the end, and I think he was over budget on a few things and elected to try re-negotiating some things in our contract including the HVAC. He convinced me that his A/C guy thought they could get away with one big unit to cover both floors (my 2nd floor is much smaller than the first), 2 thermostats and a damper. Worked fine in the winter, not good in the summer. But heck, the kids slept upstairs, so we told them to quit whining and we all lived with the situation for 26 years. Anyway, after considering a redo, I went for broke and had the two systems (one for each floor) installed, one in the attic, the other in my basement to replace the aging system. I put a little SWEAT equity into the job by installing a platform for the unit in the roof trusses along with a platform to stand up on to service the unit. Just so happened that was two weeks ago when the ambient temps were in the 90's and I'd estimate it was 125 F up there in the attic. I now know an effective way of losing weight in a hurry, but don't plan to do so again. 5 HVAC guys spent 4 days last week in my house, my bank account took a hit, but we're now cool just in time for the ambient to get nice enough to open the windows.
Other than running some trains and taking some pictures, no railroad activities, but winter is coming along with the end of lawn-cutting season. I'm starting to get some ideas together for the lower section of White Haven, which will be the last uncompleted section on the layout. It's all foreground in front of the tracks, so it's likely to be very detail intensive - probably an 18-24 month build, mostly businesses and industrial, so I'm looking forward to it.
Just prior to our vacation to the Outer Banks to celebrate my wife's 60th birthday my A/C unit's compressor up and died. Had my son and his family in town during the outage and they were staying upstairs, so something had to be done. While we were away, we called around to have a couple companies come around to diagnose, hoping to have them fix it before we got back. Didn't work - took too long to get a replacement compressor and after the eventual replacement it appears that the whole outdoor unit was on its last legs.
I'd been debating a redo on my HVAC system in my house. When we built it, my builder was nearing the end, and I think he was over budget on a few things and elected to try re-negotiating some things in our contract including the HVAC. He convinced me that his A/C guy thought they could get away with one big unit to cover both floors (my 2nd floor is much smaller than the first), 2 thermostats and a damper. Worked fine in the winter, not good in the summer. But heck, the kids slept upstairs, so we told them to quit whining and we all lived with the situation for 26 years. Anyway, after considering a redo, I went for broke and had the two systems (one for each floor) installed, one in the attic, the other in my basement to replace the aging system. I put a little SWEAT equity into the job by installing a platform for the unit in the roof trusses along with a platform to stand up on to service the unit. Just so happened that was two weeks ago when the ambient temps were in the 90's and I'd estimate it was 125 F up there in the attic. I now know an effective way of losing weight in a hurry, but don't plan to do so again. 5 HVAC guys spent 4 days last week in my house, my bank account took a hit, but we're now cool just in time for the ambient to get nice enough to open the windows.
Other than running some trains and taking some pictures, no railroad activities, but winter is coming along with the end of lawn-cutting season. I'm starting to get some ideas together for the lower section of White Haven, which will be the last uncompleted section on the layout. It's all foreground in front of the tracks, so it's likely to be very detail intensive - probably an 18-24 month build, mostly businesses and industrial, so I'm looking forward to it.
Check out my "Rainbows in the Gorge" website: http://morristhemoosetm.wixsite.com/rainbows