We’re in the middle of a three-day heat wave

When the air conditioning kicked in yesterday at about twelve-thirty, I noticed it sounded different, like it was straining. I went downstairs to see if the problem was on that end of the unit. It wasn’t making a different noise down there but the copper pipe that took refrigerant out to the compressor was warm to the touch. It should have been very hot, almost too hot to hold on to.

Outside, the compressor was making the weird straining noise and the fan wasn’t turning. My first thought was the compressor was overheating because the fan wasn’t drawing air through the unit to keep it cool. It wasn’t a bad idea, but it turned out to be wrong.

Back inside, I told Barb I had to go searching for a new fan motor. “Why don’t we call the people we usually call to fix things?” she asked. Well, because I didn’t think they were open on the weekends. Barb called, and found out they have an emergency service. It was expensive as you would expect a weekend on-call emergency service to be, but when the guy showed up, he accurately diagnosed the problem before he took the cover off the airco to test his suspicion.

We ended up paying a mind-bogglingly large amount of money to get our airco fixed, but the alternative was roasting alive in our own house, or checking into a hotel for the weekend while waiting to make an appointment for service during the week.