The original title of this post was supposed to be "all is well that ends well" because I thought that the problem with our busted centralized A/C had finally been resolved....I guess not! Now, I'm just wondering who's playing this sick joke on me? Seriously, is it "pick-on-Aimee" month because I never got the memo, nope, they haven't cc'd me...but then again, why would they???
Re: the busted A/C - so it got pushed to it's limit during the heatwave two weeks ago that was really leaving my naturally wavy hair with way too much to be desired. I know Kumar had noticed a trickling sound coming from the unit which I dismissed as the refrigerant circulating inside it's system. As it turned out, it was water actually leaking out right onto our family portrait hung beneath it and so I panicked. What you've got to understand is that we live on the top floor of our six-storey building (that affords us a pretty nice unobstructed view especially at night of our section of the city and of the annual fireworks competition, I might add!) so the sun relentlessly beats down on the roof directly over our heads. Our tiny condo is also situated on the southeast wing of the L-shaped edifice, so we soak up and trap in all of the morning sun which is fine really in the winter when it helps to dispel my SAD symptoms and keeps our heating costs down but come summertime, just renders our place perfectly conducive to hydroponically growing tomatoes, without a working A/C, that is.
I immediately thought of our friend Stavros, who had once mentioned that he worked with airconditioners at one point, so I had Kumar contact him. Stavros in turn referred us to someone whom he felt might be better-equipped to help us. I was elated to say the least, when Stavros' friend agreed to pass by the very same afternoon. When he arrived, I briefly explained to him how the airconditioner was leaking. He asked for a glass of water so I presumed he was thirsty and was about to get him some filtered water for him to drink but he had already helped himself to a glass from the kitchen tap which, before I knew it, he proceeded to quite deftly pour into the a/c to see where the leak was coming from. I honestly didn't think anything of what he had done. He seemed to know what he was doing. I figured there just had to be a method to his madness. Finally, he told me that a hose might be blocked and might need to be cleaned, and that I should get a hold of the builder to find out exactly where the connections are from the unit to the building's plumbing/HVAC system. After which, he took off.
As the day afternoon progressed, it got warmer and warmer until it reached a point that I just had to turn the a/c on. It was working fine otherwise before and I was just using a basin to catch the leaking water - my main concern was the water damage that could result to the drywall, baseboards and floor. But this time, after all of the water that Stavros' friend had poured into the unit came gushing out, it started to make funny sounds as well, noticeably different from it's usual deep drone. Feeling unsettled, I consulted the manual to see what could possibly be wrong this time. I actually came across the section on "caring for your airconditioner" and was rather surprised to see the explicit warning to "never put water into the unit" under an illustration of little boy shooting water into an airconditioner with a water gun with a big black X drawn over it. I mean, how much clearer can instructions get???
Now Stavros' friend didn't even look at the manual. I wasn't sure anymore whether he had actually exacerbated the problem or if it was just a coincidence and that the airconditioner was bound to break anyways. I'm telling you, he seemed competent enough, the only problem was, sure he worked with airconditioners, except only with ones in Greece, though (lol). But you would think the way airconditioners are built and function everywhere is universal, no??? Paranoid that the unit might short and that someone might get electrocuted, I shut down altogether the a/c's circuit breaker in the fusebox. Meanwhile, as a temporary solution, Kumar borrowed a fan from his mom, but with temperatures reaching 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Farenheit) with the humidity index factored in, all the fan did was blow around the hot air. The next morning I woke up feeling like a semi-trailer had hit me, or to describe it more aptly, that some invisible fists had pummeled me all night long....to be continued....
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