Our HVAC guy was the hero
Apparently you can’t block airflow with a HVAC unit.
Dad put us to work to find new homes for the junk that was cluttering the air flow. As he was doing his inspection he pulled out our air filter, it was filthy and probably hadn’t been changed since the last HVAC service call a year ago. The little old guy just shook his head and went out to his AC and Heating van to grab a couple of new air filters, two for the AC and one for the furnace. Dad called the lawn guy to come over and trim around the air conditioners outside while the little old farty guy started going through options for a new AC unit with Dad. I went skiing. When I came home for lunch everyone was rejoicing at the new AC unit like it was the birth of their first child. Dad was all smiles and mom lovingly supporting his happiness and his way of showing he was proud of the new member to our family. Dad came over to give the announcement of the AC’s birth as we entered the kitchen and proceeded to tell us about the need to do regular maintenance with a qualified AC serviceman with a good company. He gripped only briefly about the cost but raved about our farty little old AC repairman like he was his son. We got that it was a good thing to do maintenance but what we got more was that dad & mom were able to come up with the money with no worries to fix the AC system.