Refrigerated Air Inside

We had a little air conditioner problem last week when the unit arrived. We unpacked the box in the garage and I lugged the 90-pound, 3-feet tall unit up the stairs to my office. After a few minutes of fumbling with the sliding multi-piece window bracket (our horizontal sliding windows suck for this sort of thing, by the way) we had them configured in a way that would work and went to hook up the intake and exhaust hoses. They wouldn't reach.

I was already convinced that the air conditioner would throw the circuit breaker everytime it kicked on so long as it was plugged into an outlet in my office -- between my computer, monitors, game console, lamp, etc., etc., there couldn't be much juice left on this circuit -- but I at least expected the hoses to be more than 3 feet long.

We moved the unit (which fortunately has wheels) to the large room at the top of the stairs, just outside my office, as there's a vertical window there that the hoses should be able to reach. And they could. The only problem was that 1) the window bracket was too small, and 2) the air conditioner unit would have to sit in the middle of the hallway like some sort of robotic sentry. There was no way it would let us pass and I'm pretty sure it would give my dogs a nervous breakdown.

So we had a $700 air conditioner sitting in the middle of my office, seemingly worthless to us. I called the manufacturer and the distributor and neither had longer hoses available. I suppose I could put the thing on blocks in my office to raise it up so the hoses could reach, but pulling a maneuver like that could start me down a slippery slope. Before you know it, we'd have a working tv stacked atop a broken one and two rusted-out washing machines on our front porch.

I was pissed. The higher temps were coming and my office bakes in the summer. We need this damn thing to work. But I had a race to go to, so we just let it sit.

Yesterday, with temps in the Puget Sound area hitting 94 degrees, Kristin started looking for whole-house fans. She had sent me an email with some options and the prices and talking about returning the air conditioner. I wanted to give it one more try. It didn't need both hoses connected apparently, the second one simply helps increase efficiency in "boost mode". Makes sense to me that if you care at all about efficiency, you wouldn't turn on "boost mode" in the first place. Okay, one hose it is! I moved it to the corner of my office, worked some magic to get the window bracket to remain vertical, plugged it in, and...

The computer stayed on.
The lamps stayed on.
And the air conditioner came to life.

I quickly set it to the lowest setting and dialed down the thermostat to 69 degrees. I closed the door and went back downstairs to continue playing Forza Motorsport 2 (which I'll be writing about later tonight or tomorrow). When I went back upstairs some 25 minutes later, the room was not only much cooler than the rest of the house, but it was actually feeling chilly.

It was all I could do to keep myself from crying. Those who remember my posts about it being 100-degrees at midnight in my office last year will understand.

Fortunately I'm currently "between projects" (code for "I can sleep and play games all day if I want") so the a/c will be off most of the time. This also gives me some time to use a Dremel and cut a second hole in the window bracket down lower so the other hose can reach.

Just in case I want that boost mode after all...

PS: Yes, the title of this thread is for those of you who have eaten or worked at Jose Tejas.