A Jen Too Many

It's been beautiful weather lately. Temperatures in the 70's, not too hot, not too cold, comfy shirtsleeve weather, with just a bit of a nip at the cooler temperatures to keep you awake.

Which is a very good thing, because we don't have any way to heat or cool our house right now and won't for at least another week. Our heat pump has died - at least, the compressor has.

"...the compressor windings are internally shorted ... also the crank case heater is bad" We also need a "3/4" rotor lock" whatever that is.

The company we called when we realized the air conditioning had stopped working, has quoted a price of $2800 to replace those three parts, but that's just the starting price, because they "cannot determine if any other components are bad at this time." In other words, they can't turn it on to find out if anything else is broken.

A new one will cost us anywhere from $5800 on up. It will, however, be higher efficiency (something called a SEER rating. Our current heat pump is 10 SEER, which they don't make anymore. The lowest rating being sold now is 13 SEER.) It will also have the advantage of being new, and therefore having such nice little details as a warranty, which this one hasn't had for three years. We can also get one with new-fangled cooling juice instead of the old-fashioned kind which is going to be outlawed soon.

I am working on getting quotes from other companies. I confess to having indulged myself in fantasies where another company will quote us some delightfully low amount to repair our current system ("Three thousand? They told you three thousand? Well, shoot, ma'am, we can do this here job for three hundred!") but I don't think that's going to happen. I think we're going to have to suck it up and resign ourselves to the ugly truth. This is gonna hurt.

On the bright side, though, we're sure saving money on our electricity right now!