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captainsblogParents of the current generation of millenials will get that. It's a cautionary illustrated tale of cause and effect- if you do A, a nice and simple and worthy thing, you had better expect to follow it with B, then C, and ultimately Zed Zed Nine Plural Zed Alpha as a consequence.
So it goes with Iggy the Electric Car. Our bold, fun step to help cut down on fossil fuel usage has produced one sweet-toothed mouse after another.
We'd need a charging station, they said. Only we didn't- a standard 110 household line would work. However. The Germans made clear, as Germans do, that the car can be the one and only thing on that circuit. At present, there is only one outlet in the garage, and it has a full-size freezer running off it at all times.
Munch.
That means adding an outlet, but it also means upgrading the entire circuitry of the house. Which, we learned, is A Good Thing- our current circuit breaker manufacturer's products were condemned by Underwriters' Laboratories in the time since our last electrical work, and we had a hodgepodge of dedicated useless circuits for things we never used. So first K, and then F, quoted us to upgrade the panel, remove the crap, reconnect to the utility's power supply and, yes, put in an actual garage outlet for the car plus an extra one out in the patio area where we currently (see what I did there?) make do with extension cords, spit and scotch tape.
But wait, there's more.
Chomp.
Current code also required that we install smoke/CO detectors in every upstairs room of the house as well as one downstairs. No biggy. Bigger, though, was the compressor for our central AC unit, which has happily resided in front of our electric meter since before we moved here, when the original owner, one V. Frankenstein of Transylvania, New York, fabricated a "central" unit out of two upended room air conditioners and a trough to catch the daily dump of humidity. When his Monster died some years later, HVAC contractor C put the new compressor in the same spot. OK then, not now. It was either move the meter (K's idea, included in a much higher price) or move the compressor (which F chose).
Gurgle gurgle.
----
Eleanor was a saint, organizing the three estimator calls that came today. First was C, they who put the original unit in. As with the last round, the first to come was also the highest- by a lot. Why? Because, he said, you can't just move an air conditioner- you need to account for the fact that it's full of a now-banned coolant compound (R-22, if you're keeping score at home) that can still be used to charge units using it but which has gone way Way WAY up in price.
Burp.
D was next to arrive, and came in lower, although he insisted on also quoting a price for an all-new compressor that would pay for itself in ten years. He's also the only one of the three to admit that, on a good day with the town inspector in the right mood, we might not even have to move the damn thing (other than moving it back to where it was- F pulled it five feet out from its longtime home and it's been teetering on its pad for a week now).
Finally, U came by, lowest of all, unless we also bought the air-filtration add-on that was his upsell of the day. (I recognized the brand name. We had one of their products at our last Rochester house, and never turned it on in over three years.) He also had the odd thought of moving the compressor even further from where it is (and further still from the furnace) to the other side of the greenhouse. U's also the only company I'd never heard of before. I checked with my trainer's husband, who works in commercial construction and recommended F to us on the electric side; he had nothing bad, but neither anything all that good, to say about any of them. He did recommend his own home HVAC guy, G, if I wanted.
No thanks. I've got enough mice in this cookie jar as it is.
----
So I think the plan is to get F to put in the final outlets, label the circuits, and arrange for the town and utility to do that voodoo that they do so well. IF Inspector Gadget insists on the compressor being moved, we'll likely go with Middle Guy- not the cheapest, but certainly known enough. We learned from U to ask them to do one final thing at the site of the furnace, to cut some annoying condensation.
And when everyone's done? I'm going to bake cookies and pass them out to all these overworked mice:)
So it goes with Iggy the Electric Car. Our bold, fun step to help cut down on fossil fuel usage has produced one sweet-toothed mouse after another.
We'd need a charging station, they said. Only we didn't- a standard 110 household line would work. However. The Germans made clear, as Germans do, that the car can be the one and only thing on that circuit. At present, there is only one outlet in the garage, and it has a full-size freezer running off it at all times.
Munch.
That means adding an outlet, but it also means upgrading the entire circuitry of the house. Which, we learned, is A Good Thing- our current circuit breaker manufacturer's products were condemned by Underwriters' Laboratories in the time since our last electrical work, and we had a hodgepodge of dedicated useless circuits for things we never used. So first K, and then F, quoted us to upgrade the panel, remove the crap, reconnect to the utility's power supply and, yes, put in an actual garage outlet for the car plus an extra one out in the patio area where we currently (see what I did there?) make do with extension cords, spit and scotch tape.
But wait, there's more.
Chomp.
Current code also required that we install smoke/CO detectors in every upstairs room of the house as well as one downstairs. No biggy. Bigger, though, was the compressor for our central AC unit, which has happily resided in front of our electric meter since before we moved here, when the original owner, one V. Frankenstein of Transylvania, New York, fabricated a "central" unit out of two upended room air conditioners and a trough to catch the daily dump of humidity. When his Monster died some years later, HVAC contractor C put the new compressor in the same spot. OK then, not now. It was either move the meter (K's idea, included in a much higher price) or move the compressor (which F chose).
Gurgle gurgle.
----
Eleanor was a saint, organizing the three estimator calls that came today. First was C, they who put the original unit in. As with the last round, the first to come was also the highest- by a lot. Why? Because, he said, you can't just move an air conditioner- you need to account for the fact that it's full of a now-banned coolant compound (R-22, if you're keeping score at home) that can still be used to charge units using it but which has gone way Way WAY up in price.
Burp.
D was next to arrive, and came in lower, although he insisted on also quoting a price for an all-new compressor that would pay for itself in ten years. He's also the only one of the three to admit that, on a good day with the town inspector in the right mood, we might not even have to move the damn thing (other than moving it back to where it was- F pulled it five feet out from its longtime home and it's been teetering on its pad for a week now).
Finally, U came by, lowest of all, unless we also bought the air-filtration add-on that was his upsell of the day. (I recognized the brand name. We had one of their products at our last Rochester house, and never turned it on in over three years.) He also had the odd thought of moving the compressor even further from where it is (and further still from the furnace) to the other side of the greenhouse. U's also the only company I'd never heard of before. I checked with my trainer's husband, who works in commercial construction and recommended F to us on the electric side; he had nothing bad, but neither anything all that good, to say about any of them. He did recommend his own home HVAC guy, G, if I wanted.
No thanks. I've got enough mice in this cookie jar as it is.
----
So I think the plan is to get F to put in the final outlets, label the circuits, and arrange for the town and utility to do that voodoo that they do so well. IF Inspector Gadget insists on the compressor being moved, we'll likely go with Middle Guy- not the cheapest, but certainly known enough. We learned from U to ask them to do one final thing at the site of the furnace, to cut some annoying condensation.
And when everyone's done? I'm going to bake cookies and pass them out to all these overworked mice:)
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no subject
Date: 2013-07-10 06:51 am (UTC)Good luck!
*hopes for a cookie*
no subject
Date: 2013-07-10 11:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-13 09:32 pm (UTC)New deck? Great! But then how will we clean it? Oh, we'll just call the plumber and have him quote us to install a new hose spigot up on the deck rather than one story down on the ground. Awesome! But while he's here, why don't we have him look at this and that and that and this. Before you know it, you've given him a list of 4 or 5 jobs adding up to $1,000.