...and get very cranky when I am. I consider AC one of the best inventions EVER!

I have often said, in all seriousness, that if I had to choose between having a refrigerator and having central air, I would happily buy a giant cooler and go to the store for ice every day rather than give up central air.

And of course I just started a 2-week break from work and wanted to clean the house. I guess I'll wait for the part because cleaning makes me cranky enough without adding heat & humidity into the equation 🔥

You and I have a lot in common.

I used to have a little sign hanging from my closet doorknob that said, "You may touch the dust but please don't write in it."

There are times when you could.

When people write in the dust then I feel compelled to clean it. My son loves to do that 👎. So, it doesn't take much for me to skip this planned cleaning 😁.

In an ideal world humans would've never populated places that aren't inhabitable without A/C. You could live without it in Northern AZ, but southern AZ? Hell no. Why didn't they put Phoenix where Flagstaff is and leave the area that is Phoenix as untainted desert? I think it had something to do with the railroad being down south.

but I'm in a full maintenance complex
in a really good area of town.

I have central A/C, the usual kind, but given that the power company, in cover-their-ass mode for past crimes, has put the power lines on "soft trigger" mode, power goes out now and then, and sometimes for real wildfires.

I don't run the central A/C on the propane-powered backup generator, but have window a/c units to cool one room at a time, where I hang out during the day. They just use a lot less power/propane.


There are room units, as well. I looked very briefly. I don't know if one can rent or buy and return after the situation clears. Same for the window units.

Making a note for the future: try to stick with major brands, so that parts might be more readily available.

Hopefully.

And get a very competent installer.

I had an electrical fix for an ancient breaker for the well pump that quit. The work was so incredibly awful (about what I would have done as a 6 year-old) that I had all the electrical boxes at the pump house updated. By the better contractor in town.

I thought Bosch was made in Germany. Apparently that changed recently.....so here I am sweating my butt off. And we used this company before with no problems (at my mom's house).... It's a fairly large company though and I think I did not get their varsity team this time. I have read that the installation and proper setup are key to a long-lasting system.

for the manufacturer. Older electric and electronic switches lasted longer, were less prone to breaking with power surges (which we are all going to suffer more of because of you know - data centers) - but they would cost much more to build if you were to include them today, because the supply chain moved toward miniaturization and integration of function in the smallest package possible. Regarding clothes dryers (a little off topic - but the general idea holds) newer circuit boards allow them to put more consumer control "options" - but I've found they're more trouble than they're worth. For example, we have a stacked Speed queen washer and dryer from 2022. The dryer worked great until a month ago, when the control board went bad. I got a replacement board and it lasted for two days. I've checked for power surges and nothing out of the ordinary. Might be a bad relay as it's not sending current to the heating element (which checks out as do all the thermal sensors), and the drum turns fine. We always dry on the same regular setting. I'm going to get another replacement board as the last one is under warranty and if that craps out I swear to god, I'm going to re-wire the dryer so that it's more like its analog predecessors. I will literally drill a hole in the soft touch control panel and wire an analog timer with on-switch to this thing. A clothes dryer is basically a glorified toaster with an air blower, and a drum rotation means. Advanced circuitry on a dryer is flat out stupid for the consumer - although it makes plenty for the repair folks. I just want things to work for a reasonable lifespan (you should get 12 years from a heavy appliance without one issue). I have no desire to waste my dwindling years constantly fucking with them. More and more "things" are turning out to be lemons. And should anyone suggest I'm a Luddite, why yes, having done 15 years as a software engineer and on and off again circuit board prototyper, I know enough to be skeptical of this bullshit we're being pushed. If I were 25, maybe I'd be excited about rolling my own generic control board with off the shelf components bought at Microcenter - but I'm 63.