A/C installation (II)

Greg (father-in-law) and I started working on the A/C Wednesday afternoon. I had picked up the A-coil, line set and pad in the morning and when Greg got to the house with his truck we picked up the condenser. The first matter is to cut a hole in the plenum of the furnace. We cut the hole above the burner, then attached some strips of right angle aluminum to rest the A-coil on. You can see the furnace coils are positioned right below the brackets that the A-coil rests on. The A-coil is filled with a gas (nitrogen I think), to ensure that the integrity of the unit is intact when you install it. You use a tube cutter to remove the cap on the end of the bigger pipe coming out of the A-coil, and the gas is released at that point. You set the coil on the brackets and then work on "brazing" the line set to the A-coil.

Part III

A/C installation

After going through 4 different air conditioner contractors list year and continually hearing $3500 to $4500 as a price to install an A/C for our house, I went to a local appliance store and priced an OEM unit. The total price was just under $1600. After consulting with my father-in-law, who used to install A/C units (70's), we decided to take a chance and install it ourselves.

I search low and high for tutorials on the internet and came up with very little, it seems most people do not take this kind of work on themselves. But, Greg had done it before and I was full of silly confidence. In the end it worked out, but we did get lucky. I feel like I could perform this installation again. I will detail the experience in a couple of posts for the future diyer to try :)

I found a great, very complete tutorial: Alpine

Part II

Just when you thought it was over

This just in, the basement at the old house flooded with the torrent of rain we had last week.

Naturally I get a call from Rob: the buyers agent for our old house called and they want us to pay for repairs to ensure that the basement doesn't get wet again!

They are getting a mold analysis today and they already have a quote to fix the sidewalk $930!

So the good news is that Rob and his lawyer don't thing we are liable as that area of the house was never wet while we lived there. We also disclosed when the basement did get wet while we lived there, so what would our motivation have been to hide an alleged wet basement...

Just another chapter in a book we thought we had finished.

Old House is Sold

Well our old house is officially out of our hands now. We closed last Friday, went pretty smoothly except that our realtor didn't show up, didn't call us to let us know he wouldn't be there and didn't get us the settlement statement before hand.

Jen called him today, here is what he said:

• Guys I was at a family reunion, I sent Shelly in my place. She said no one asked about me. Fact is that we definitely asked about him, we made fun of him for probably about 10 minutes, with the other realtor... She might have been there, we weren't sure. There was a woman there that we thought was from the bank, because she didn't introduce herself and defend Rob at all.
  
• Sorry guys I forgot to call...
• Guys the settlement statement should be given to you by the title company... Maybe, I don't know. But the woman who was there said that our realtor should have given it to us...
• Bonus point, he said he would charge us 4.75% commission. But had to write it up as 5% for Keller Williams. Of course talking with him today, no guys that was only if I sold the house by myself... However, he also told us that he would not do that because of the conflict of interest.

So anyways, we won't be using him again. It is too bad, because he is a really nice guy and good at drawing houses. But clearly, we can't tolerate him lying to us.

We ended up paying the 5% ($10,000) for realtor commissions, then about 1700 in other bullshit fees that get piled on.

Also, we had to go recover the old fridge, the buyers didn't want that... Anyone interested in an old fridge?

We have ants!

So big bummer, we have ant problems. Jen has been seeing quite a few of them recently. I would say I kill a random ant about 4 times a day... Jen said she found about 10 in the garage bag in the kitchen yesterday (she decided we could use a new one...).

I sprayed the perimeter of the house with some home protect stuff (will check the brand later) on Friday, hopefully that will help.

Pull-up Bar

The homemade pull-up bar I constructed. 1/2 inch vertical pipes, and a 3/4 inch horizontal bar. Couldn't find a 3/4 inch flange to attach to the joist. Also, I am not sure the larger flange would have fit on the joist.

I attached some 2x4's to the webbing to hopefully add some support to the flange screws. I don't have any concerns about the vertical force on the joists, but I am a bit concerned with lateral movements.

It has worked really well for the sets I have done so far. If it ever feels unsecured, I figure I can put blocking between the joists. Total cost was about $35.

[rebates] IPod, Activa

Apparently there is a class action against Apple for the 1st gen nano's. Because the scratch... Jen and I both have one, and they are scratch, so why not. The rebate amount depends on the number of participants, so it is variable.

Sent in a rebate for Activa, it will reimburse the cost of the product, so we picked up a pack and sent in the rebate. 6.99