The older I got, the much tougher it was to get over a chest and head cold. I hate those things so much anyway. I feel just miserable enough not to want to do anything at all but rest in the heating and cooling comfort of home. Yet, I’m okay enough to actually work and look after my other responsibilities. So, I’m sort of not happy either way. But the past several years has seen these sorts of colds just hang on forever. It’s like more than a month of me dealing with respiratory issues. I figured I was just getting older and didn’t bounce back that quick. Still, that was just too long for this stuff to last so I got to talking with a doctor friend about it. He told me that while I may have initially caught something, I shouldn’t be dealing with those symptoms that long. My friend thought it was environmental. He suggested that I call the HVAC company to see what I could do to improve the air quality of my home. And he was spot on. I called the HVAC company and they picked up where my friend left off. They installed a whole house air purification system inside the HVAC unit. Before they did that, they also did the ductwork cleaning and ductwork resealing I had neglected to ever do. Once I had all of this up and running for me, I was amazed by how quickly my respiratory health snapped right back. Not only do I have amazing indoor air quality, I now have the best smelling indoor air I’ve ever experienced.
Working out now that I don’t have to leave air conditioning at home
I’m really not one to play the what if game.
That’s always a kind of dangerous mind game to play anyway.
It’s just tough to consider alternatives once the moment has passed. You just have to live with your decisions and try to improve. But I do wonder sometimes if getting back in shape would have been much easier a decade ago. I think it would have because that’s one less decade that I would have spent sitting in the air conditioning instead of being active. For so much of my life, I went from sitting in the zone controlled HVAC of the office to sitting in my recliner in the air conditioning at home. That is not good for a body in any sort of way at all. All that sedentary lifestyle ends up catching up with a person. Now that I’m in my 50’s, I’m trying to prevent more adverse health conditions by getting in better shape. At first, I tried just getting out of the air conditioning to take a walk. And I’d also take a walk during my lunch hour. This had the desired effect and soon became a behavior. So then, I tried the gym. But there were two things that just didn’t work for me in the gym. One was feeling so weird working out with other people. The other was that the heating and cooling in that gym was the worst. That resulted in me letting the membership lapse. But I knew I needed strength and more aerobic exercise. So I put a ductless heat pump in the basement and put in my own gym at home.
They did not prepare me to move south.
When my boss called me into his office, I never expected it was to offer me a new position and a change of scenery.
He told me he had an opening in one of their new facilities and he needed a manager to run the entire area.
I couldn’t believe the benefits package he had planned for me, and that was just the beginning. He said he would provide housing for the first six months until I could find someplace of my own, and he paid for the move. Add in the new pay raise, and I felt like I was walking on air. On the day I was to leave, he handed me the address and all the information for the new home. He then introduced me to one of the employees who was going to be working with me. He paid for her to fly up and fly back with me. I was not prepared for the change in climate when I got off the plane. It was snowing when I got onto the plane, but it was nearly eighty degrees when I got off. I asked the woman if there was air conditioning in the apartment they got me. She said that every home in this area had air conditioning. When she chuckled, I frowned. I had never lived in the south, and I couldn’t imagine never seeing snow again, but this was what I had chosen. I could only hope the air conditioning in the apartment was as good as the furnace in my old apartment. Surprisingly, I had a three-bedroom home to go home to, and the air conditioning was better than I could imagine.
Our air conditioning wasn’t able to be repaired.
Last month I called the HVAC company to have my air conditioning unit inspected and prepared for summer.
After nearly an hour of working on the AC unit, the HVAC technician told us that it was not able to be repaired and we needed a new one.
He said he had already contacted the HVAC contractor and he would call to make an appointment to talk to my husband and I. Apparently, when you need a new HVAC system now, you have to have an HVAC contractor tell you what you need. I thought this was ridiculous, but who was I to try to change the new rules. When the HVAC contractor arrived the next day, he measured the house and asked how many people lived here. He asked about our habits of being home and how often we thought the door was opened and shut throughout the day. He then wanted to know about the efficiency we sought. He talked about SEER which is the energy rating system for air conditioning units. The higher the SEER, the better the energy efficiency. I didn’t understand half of what he was talking about, but I did know that the cost was a bit more than I expected. I hoped the air conditioning was worth what we had to pay for it. Needless to say, the air conditioning was worth so much more than what we paid. The house was more comfortably cool than it had ever been, and the humidity was perfect. Now, all we need is a whole-home air purification system.
New HVAC systems
My fingers cramped from the cold.
My mother walked into the house the other day and looked right at my hands.
I hadn’t thought anything about my wearing gloves in the house, but she did. She wanted to know why it was so cold in the house, and why I was wearing gloves. I tried to explain that the landlord refused to have my furnace repaired, and I couldn’t afford to have it done. She was livid and told me I had to go home with her before I caught my death from pneumonia. I couldn’t tell her that I had gone without heating for almost a week now. If she knew the furnace had broken six days ago, the lawyer in her would have gone ballistic. I was only home at night, so I figured I could handle the cold until my landlord relented and agreed to have the furnace repaired. My mother wasn’t as optimistic as I was about the landlord relenting, and before I could object, she was packing up my clothes and computer. While packing, she was also on the phone to my landlord. I couldn’t hear everything she was saying, but I could hear words like furnace, slum lord, and suing. I was sure my landlord was going to kick me out once my mother was done. She smiled when she came out of the bedroom and told me to be prepared to be at the house for at least a week. That would give my landlord enough time to contact the HVAC company and have the furnace replaced. I wondered if it would be too much to also ask for a new air conditioning unit and to have the ductwork cleaned?
There was so much heat coming off the light bulb that I thought I was sunburned.
I hated going into our basement because it had an unfinished floor, and it was always cold and damp.
The basement light switch was at the bottom of the steps which made me even more hesitant to go down there.
When my husband told me I had to show the HVAC technician down into the basement so he could inspect the furnace, I shuddered. I didn’t like the idea of going down there even if someone was with me. The furnace could have blown up and I wouldn’t have felt compelled to go down there so why would I take the HVAC technician down there. When the HVAC technician arrived, I showed him to the basement door and told him the furnace was down there. He reached around the inside and asked where the light switch was? I knew I had to go down and turn on the light. I never gave a thought to the lightbulb and what would happen when I turned it on. What I never thought was how bright the light was going to be. My husband told me he changed the light bulb, but I didn’t think it was going to be a 100 Watt light bulb, or that it would throw off so much heat. The heat from the light bulb felt like it was going to give me a sunburn. While standing under the light, I didn’t even think about needing the furnace to warm me up. That’s when I realized I was in the basement and I knew I had to go back upstairs.
air filter
He was a true geek, but I liked him.
When I first met my husband, he was climbing off a motorcycle, clad in leather, and sporting hair down to his waist and a fu manchu beard and mustache.
I was wondering what I had gotten myself into by going on a blind date with this man.
I thought he was going to tear the place down then kidnap me. What he did was speak softly and let me know that he was a true geek. After two hours of sitting in the restaurant chatting, and forgetting about our lunch, we decided to go out again. He was telling me about the HVAC company he had worked for since he was fifteen. He said his dad owned the company, but since he wasn’t much of a conformist, his dad wouldn’t let him work as an HVAC technician. He was stuck in the garage working on all the service vans. He found out he had a natural ability for anything mechanical and electrical. When the HVAC started heading toward the more sophisticated integrated computer systems, he found his niche. His father no longer cared about his long hair or motorcycles. He saw John as a true genius with computers and someone who could bring the HVAC company into the modern age. I was finding out that I really liked this man who marched to a different drum beat than anyone I had ever talked to. Within six weeks, he asked me to marry him, and I am now planning my wedding. We’re talking about buying into his father’s HVAC company, and creating an entity that can work with the local hospital.
It sounded like someone wheezing.
Last week we had a really bad wind storm.
I sat in the living room trying to work on my computer, and with one particular gust of wind, it sounded like someone wheezing really badly. I stopped typing and listened closely. I realized that not only was there an odd sound, but every time I heard it, I felt a draft go across my shoulders. It hit me that all the noise and draft was coming from my living room windows. Not only did I have wheezy windows, but the furnace was running nonstop. I called my son and asked for his assistance. Never had I realized how nice it was going to be to have an HVAC technician in the family until after he opened his own HVAC company. All I had to do was call, and he was at the house. I always offered to pay for his time and travel, but he usually declined. He was okay with me paying for parts, but that didn’t always work either. The first thing he did after walking into the house, was to ask where dad was? He said he would know that snoring anywhere, and then he laughed. He then went over to the window. He told me that not only did I need some weatherstripping, but I needed to have the glass repaired. He then checked the furnace and told me that once the window was repaired, the cold draft would be gone. He then asked where dad was, that I hadn’t talked to him. I reminded him that he was away for two weeks, but I was glad maneuvers were almost done.
When you look at a house, picture it as it will be and not as it is.
When I bought my home, I didn’t even want my mom and dad to see it before it was remodeled.
I bought a fixer-upper that my fiance and I could make our own.
The shell of the house was beautiful and the inside was in excellent shape. I wanted to make some changes that would bring it into the modern world. For one thing, the fireplace had to be completely taken apart and rebuilt. The hearth was breaking up and there were a lot of smoke stains on the wall. We wanted to replace the walls before installing the new fireplace. The house didn’t have a modern HVAC system, which is where we had to start with the remodeling. I didn’t want to put my new Bamboo flooring down without first installing the HVAC system. We knew how easy it would be to scratch the bamboo. As soon as we talked to the HVAC contractor and told him what we wanted, we were going to head out and get all the supplies we needed for the rest of the indoor restoration. In the meantime, we had someone replacing the old chimney and putting in a chimney that had a liner. We also needed the air vents installed for the bathrooms and the kitchens, and the air vents for the HVAC installed. I couldn’t wait to have all the work completed so I could invite our parents over for an old-fashioned sit down dinner. It was hard to explain to people that they had to see the house for what it will be and not what it is. That was not who my parents were.
There was smoke in the house, but no fire.
It didn’t take long for smoke to build up in the cabin
After the wedding, my husband and I went up to the cabin to spend a romantic week. We had been to mom and dad’s cabin quite often, but only for short periods. Mostly it was an overnight stay so we could do some much needed repairs. We had planned on selling the cabin, but my husband and I loved it so much that we decided to buy it from them. There was something about staying in a cabin in the mountains that brought the kid out of me. I loved listening to the crackling of the fire in the fireplace. I could sit there and smell the wood fireplace while staring out the wall sized picture window, all day long. I remembered how we would play outside in the snow and then come inside. Mom would have hot chocolate ready for us, and we would warm up by the fireplace while sipping on hot chocolate. When my husband and I discussed our honeymoon, the only place I wanted to go was to the cabin. We got married in December, and I couldn’t wait to relax in front of the fireplace and listen to the snow quietly falling outside. My husband agreed that it was the perfect place for a honeymoon. When we got up there, he immediately lit a fire in the fireplace. It didn’t take long for smoke to build up in the cabin. We should have checked to see if there were any blockages in the chimney. No sooner had we lit the fire, but we heard a racket in the chimney from the squirrel that had nested in there and was trying to escape.