That time I used the internet to make amataur technician repair
When I stayed up north for a summer season a few years ago, there were a couple weeks of non stop heat waves accompanied by indoor humidity I genuinely wasn’t prepared for.
- Living in the south for a while, my central heating and cooling systems were equipped to handle the summers pretty well, but where I was staying up north relied on one air conditioning unit, which subsequently lost more than half of it’s cooling power in a matter of weeks.
The HVAC company I called told me it would take somewhere between 3-5 business days for a repairman to come out just to get a quote before the repair could be made. Explaining my situation over the phone, the appraisal I was given was a turn off on it’s own; I figured there’s got to be a better way. First, I went online and read up as much how-to information as I could find. After a quick trip to the hardware store, I proceeded to replace the furnace filter as well as cleaning off the condenser coils. I was instructed to turn off the furnace breaker, move the thermostat mode from cooling to off, and then turn the fan switch from auto to on and allow it to run for about thirty minutes or so and filter out any debris. I gave it forty five minutes just to play it safe and after turning the switches back and resetting the mode, it basically came back to life in a matter of a few minutes. To think, I spent under fifty dollars at the hardware store for a job that would have cost easily over two hundred to hire an HVAC repairman. It paid off to get my hands dirty.