Cyn Armistead

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Cold! Cold cold cold!

Cyn

Our heat went out last night, so we woke up in a very, very cold house. I don’t care what you Yan­kees say, we had a hard freeze here, so it real­ly was cold! There was snow on the car before we went to bed Tues­day night, and we had to get ice off the wind­shield to go see my pain spe­cial­ist today. I felt like I’d nev­er be warm again despite wear­ing the pret­ty gloves and scarf Sam bought for me a while back.1I have got to get a “real” win­ter coat, but it feels like such a waste to do so in Geor­gia. Until days like today!

There was no response from the land­lord to email or many phone calls until late in the day. I hud­dled under the cov­ers most of the day, both to try to get warm and because my pain is always worse in cold weath­er. The land­lord even­tu­al­ly got some­one out to check the sys­tem late this evening.

The main­te­nance guy claimed the fil­ter was dirty. That’s pret­ty hard to believe since Sam changed it this morn­ing, and the sys­tem had­n’t run since then. But okay, maybe maraud­ing squir­rels came along and soiled it, or the big black spi­ders that spooked the main­te­nance man did it. What­ev­er. I’d fuss a lot more if he’d tried to say that was the rea­son the sys­tem died, but he did­n’t. He found some part that was bad, so he “bypassed the safeties” to get the heat back on.

“Bypassed the safeties” isn’t a hap­py thought to me. They exist for a rea­son, yes? Does that mean if the thing goes crazy it might explode instead of shut­ting down? He was­n’t a par­tic­u­lar­ly artic­u­late indi­vid­ual, and what he said made no log­i­cal sense, so I’m still in the dark about that.

He does­n’t know where to buy a new part. That isn’t com­fort­ing, either. See, he does main­te­nance for an apart­ment build­ing that our land­lord’s employ­er man­ages. He isn’t actu­al­ly employed by an HVAC com­pa­ny, and I’m pret­ty sure that if we checked he isn’t licensed to, say, han­dle refrig­er­ants or any­thing like that. Good thing it’s the heat instead of the air con­di­tion­ing, huh?2My Dad­dy has worked in HVAC for most of my life­time, so I’m more than slight­ly prej­u­diced about trained tech­ni­cians, rou­tine main­te­nance, and so on. He has no busi­ness crawl­ing around under our or any oth­er house at his age (and with his bad back and neck), so we don’t call him about prob­lems unless we need him to refer us to some­one else to fix them. Not to men­tion that the last time he did help us with this kind of prob­lem, the own­er of our pre­vi­ous home stiffed him on the bill for the parts (he had­n’t even charged labor!), so we don’t ever want to ask him to help out a land­lord again (or help us because a land­lord isn’t doing his or her job).

So the main­te­nance guy is going to talk to his boss at the apart­ment build­ing Fri­day to see if he can get a part through them to fix our fur­nace so we’ll have more reli­able heat. The land­lord and her fam­i­ly are in Orlan­do doing Dis­ney. Oh, hap­py day.3Of course, they don’t believe in hav­ing rou­tine main­te­nance done on the sys­tem, so they always end up pay­ing more for repairs when some­thing goes wrong than they would have paid to have it checked and ser­viced reg­u­lar­ly, and the equip­ment won’t last as long, either. Repairs usu­al­ly seem to be need­ed when they’re trav­el­ing some­where, too. It’s a Mur­phy thing.

The main­te­nance guy was nice enough to come here, at least, as a favor to our land­lord. Con­sid­er­ing that he’s lived here a very short time and had to be guid­ed in by phone, and had to call Sam for help find­ing his way back home, and he’d already done a full day of work, that was very nice of him. The poor guy knows noth­ing about any­where but a few blocks in mid­town, appar­ent­ly. Well, that’s what he knew this after­noon. His world has been expand­ed to include Decatur, now.

It’s much warmer in the house now, and it’ll be absolute­ly toasty in bed with my Sam­bear. Nitey nite!

Cyn is Katie's mom, Esther's Mémé, and a Support Engineer. She lives in the Atlanta area with her life partner, Rick, and their critters. She knits, does counted-thread needlework, reads, makes music, plays TTRPGs, and spends too much time online.
Website http://technomom.com/
Posts created 4253

8 thoughts on “Cold! Cold cold cold!”

  1. Cold=worse pain. Hot seems to do the same to me.

    I may need to pick your brain about podcasting…Let me know if there’s a good email to use:)

    -Aladri­ana

  2. hey- just won­der­ing — don’t you trust lj anymore?
    so my com­ment- I think los­ing your heat as a sur­prise is a par­tic­u­lar­ly unpleas­ant expe­ri­ence hav­ing hap­pened sev­er­al times in Upstate NY I defi­nate­ly know what I’m talk­ing about *lol*- it defi­nate­ly helps to have some­one to cud­dle up with :)
  3. **warm hugs** Yeah, I’d wor­ry about bypass­ing safe­ty things on my heat, too.

    We actu­al­ly used our fire­place last night, which was quite delightful.

    Here’s hop­ing the heat gets fixed prop­er­ly, soon!

  4. I feel your pain. I have just had one of the worst expe­ri­ences with an air con­di­tion­ing com­pa­ny from Braden­ton Flori­da. Last month they installed a brand new cen­tral A/C unit. I dis­cov­ered that the heat did not work on Jan­u­ary 2nd. when the tem­per­a­ture dropped to 32 in Sara­so­ta. I suf­fered through the 1st night and then called first thing in the morn­ing. They refused to send a repair man, explain­ing that their repair man is just too busy with oth­er cus­tomers. They agreed to send him out the next day which of course is too late. The tem­per­a­ture was only going to be 40 with a wind chill fac­tor of 37 on the 3rd of Jan­u­ary. I phoned them back and said I need­ed some­one today. I got the run around and then final­ly they sent out the orig­i­nal installer. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, He only installs the units and does not real­ly know how to make repairs. He called the Ser­vice tech who then agreed to come out. He nev­er showed up. I spent the long night in bed wear­ing a win­ter jack­et with the hood over my head and sev­er­al blan­kets. What real­ly made the sit­u­a­tion hor­ri­ble was that I have had the flu for the past week. I was just get­ting over it before all of this hap­pened. Now, I can’t speak and have a hor­ri­ble ear­ache with the chills. Now I will be miss­ing a day of work. They called this morn­ing and said the tech will be here 1st thing. It is 9:30am and he is still not here. I guess they are wait­ing for the temer­a­ture to reach 80 degrees before they fix the heat. My plan now is to have them remove the unit and get my mon­ey back. Just so you know the com­pa­ny is Oceanaire from Braden­ton Flori­da. I would not rec­om­mend them to my worst ene­my. Thanks for allow­ing me to vent. I am feel­ing quite defeat­ed at the moment.
  5. Aladri­ana, either my tech­nomom at LJ address or cyn at tech­nomom dot com will work :-)

    My body does­n’t seem to be able to reg­u­late tem­per­a­tures very well any more. Heat exhausts me, but does­n’t add to my pain as much as the cold.

  6. It isn’t that I don’t trust LJ, Kaaren — I just can’t keep up with updat­ing in both places, and if I try to fol­low com­ments in two places I always miss some­thing. So I decid­ed to cross-post the text and ask peo­ple to com­ment here. I hope it isn’t too annoying!

    No heat in NY would be much worse. I’m such a wimp! I don’t know how you deal with all that ice and snow.

  7. I’m envi­ous, Hope! It’s been YEARS since we had a work­ing fire­place! I bet y’all were nice and toasty :-)
  8. Cheryl, that’s ter­ri­ble! I’d def­i­nite­ly be LOUD about com­plain­ing about that com­pa­ny. Write a let­ter to your paper, local con­sumer reporters, the Bet­ter Busi­ness Bureau, etc. Post about them on your local paper’s web site, any local web forums or LJ com­mu­ni­ties, etc. Peo­ple should know not to deal with them!

    I look for­ward to own­ing our own home so we can pick the repair peo­ple we deal with.

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