I was so happy to finally move out of my parents house. I took the first apartment that I could find in my budget. I didn’t know anything about looking for apartments and I didn’t bother to check if the plumbing worked well or even if I was responsible to pay the hot water bill. The first month in the apartment went well. All of my bills were paid and I had food in the fridge. The second month in the apartment went downhill. I started to have trouble with the AC unit. I called the landlord and he told me that I was responsible for paying for the AC repairs. I looked at my lease and I could not believe that I did not pay attention to that clause. I didn’t know what to do about the AC problems and it was only the beginning of Summer. I called my mom and dad and they paid for an AC repair company to come to the apartment. Thankfully, the repair was inexpensive. I still owe my mom and dad $400 for the cost of the AC repair, but at least I don’t have to spend the entire summer being miserable. I was in a hurry to get out of my parents house and be on my own, but I should have waited until I was more financially stable to move. My parents would have been happy to let me stay as long as I wanted. They were in no rush for me to leave. I am the youngest of three and now the house is completely empty.
The furnace didn't keep us warm
My wife and I always wanted to visit the mountains and see snow.
Both of us grew up in a tiny town on the bayou.
Most of our life was filled with warm water, alligators, and swimming in the lake. We never had to worry about the cold air and we never saw any snow when we were growing up. When we set a date to get married, we decided to plan our honeymoon for a snowy, mountainous destination. We got married in the middle of October and it was not difficult to find a place where there was already some snow on the ground. My wife and I went to a well-known ski resort and stayed in a private chalet. We spent as much time on the slopes as we did in the room. The amenities were really nice. We had a king-size bed and a jetted tub. We also had room service and in room couples massages. The only problem we had was the furnace. We had the heat set to 75 degrees, but the furnace didn’t seem to keep us warm. The air coming out of the ductwork was a cool temperature instead of hot. We could have complained about the furnace and switched rooms, but we had the best view in the whole group of chalets. We could see all of the back side of the double diamond trail and the view was spectacular. My wife and I didn’t focus on the furnace problems and we found other ways to keep each other warm during our five-day honeymoon in the mountains.
I need to find shop space for rent as I transport my clay making unit out of my house
I have always been romantic about visual art, but I never thought I could turn it into a job someday.
I figured that I’d honestly land myself a 9 to 5 office task where I’b relegated to sitting in misery in a cubicle for the rest of my adult life.
I went through that process for a number of years, being in 1 call center after the next. But while I was grinding away in the workforce, I was relentlessly pursuing my hobbies in visual art. I paint when I have the inspiration, but I care about to toil with clay whenever I have time available. Sculpting pottery plus figurines is becoming an obsession that takes up most of my time when I’m home from work, but a coworker from my last task told me that I should sell my pottery at a local arts plus crafts fair, but I didn’t suppose I was wonderful enough to turn my activity into a business. I took a leap of faith plus ended up selling all of the clay Tim Hortons Latte mugs I had made, which all had custom plus particular glazes plus colors. The next month I came back to the fair with more of my work, plus again it was a roaring success. I have so many patrons right now that I’m struggling to keep up with the process. I need a larger working space to grow my business. I started looking all around my neighborhood for shop space to rent so I can get my unit out of my cramped condo plus into a big industrial or commercial space. I had to ask around plus spent 2 weeks straight looking at ad listings for shop space to rent before I found a perfect place in a current industrial park. The rent is affordable plus it isn’t far from my house.
I need to find shop space for rent as I transport our clay making equipment out of our house
I have constantly been passionate about visual art, however I never thought I could turn it into a career someday.
I figured that I’d entirely land myself a 9 to 5 office job where I’b relegated to resting in misery in a cubicle for the rest of our adult life.
I went through that process for a number of years, being in 1 call center after the next. But while I was grinding away in the workforce, I was relentlessly pursuing our hobbies in visual art. I paint when I have the inspiration, however I love to toil with clay whenever I have time available. Sculpting pottery plus figurines is becoming an obsession that takes up most of our time when I’m home from work. A coworker from our last job told myself and others that I should sell our pottery at a local arts plus crafts fair, however I didn’t assume I was great enough to turn our interest into a business. I took a leap of faith plus ended up selling all of the clay pop mugs I had made, which all had custom plus certain glazes plus colors. The next month I came back to the fair with more of our work, plus again it was a roaring success. I have so many purchasers right now that I’m struggling to keep up with the process. I need a greater working space to grow our business. I started looking all around our village for shop space to rent so I can get our equipment out of our cramped home plus into a large industrial or commercial space. I had to ask around plus spent many weeks straight looking at ad listings for shop space to rent before I found a perfect locale in a new industrial park. The rent is affordable plus it isn’t far from our house.
The importance of quality air filters
First of all, before I talk about this I need to say that everyone involved is totally safe.
They are in the area of the wildfires out west, in fact they are completely surrounded by wildfires! But my friend and her family are all very safe, because they live above the timberline, so there is no forest to catch fire up there.
But even though they are safe from the flames, they are still trapped at home, and as the fires worsen so does the outdoor air quality, so to breathe easily they need to stay in the house. She sends pictures of how the entire sky is tinged orange and red, like the world is on fire, and even at that altitude they have needed the house HVAC system to keep safe. The smoke engulfs there entire property, at times for hours on end, so the air filters in the central HVAC system are always in use, even when the heating isn’t turned on the fans stay running. The air had to circulate constantly, and she has gotten pathological about checking the air filters two or three times a day to make sure they aren’t getting too dirty. Thankfully she has an extra package of 12 air filters in her garage, but she is still very worried so she keeps the old ones and tries to scrap them as clean as possible. Hopefully it will burn out quickly, but if they end up trapped on the mountaintop for a longer period of time, she may have to reuse and recycle those HEPA air filters.
Fixing up the family cabin
The family cabin had not been used in some time, probably since Aunt Mable died and that was almost a decade ago. I called around to a few people, just inquiring if the cabin had been sold, or if anyone was staying there, but no one knew anything. Mable was the only one who ever used the place, it seemed, so after she passed it just sat empty, until a couple of months ago I decided to go check it out. I had extra free time thanks to the quarantine, so this seemed like it could be a good project. Right away, the lack of air conditioning concerned me greatly. Mabel loved to fish and sit by the water smoking cigarettes, so she had not ever bothered getting central AC for the place. I did find a small AC unit in one of the closets, the kind you mount in a window to cool down a single room. Even that was too old and rusted to ever turn on or generate cooling, so I was at loose ends. There was an amazing central fireplace ,which also served as a furnace for the place, so the winters would not be a problem. I had to decide if I just wanted to relegate this cabin to winter use, or if I should invest in some kind of cooling system so I could use it rear round. After all, I hated my apartment in the city, and had been working from home anyway, so if I could get A/C and wifi set up here, I could stay for a while.
Cooling my new cabin
Building this log cabin has been a lifelong dream of mine, and a source of worry and work for the last three years.
I think I may have another year or so left until I am done with it all.
Part of the reason for that is me being in no hurry at all. I want it to be pitch perfect in every way, so if it takes ten years to finish, then that’s how long it takes! The structure itself is done, and there is a roof and walls and even exterior doors, so I can sleep here on long weekends. To work here during the summer I definitely had to invest in a small air conditioning unit, which would work now that I had enclosed spaces. The first few summers were brutal, with no hope of any cooling besides jumping in the lake, because with no structure to trap the cold air there was no point in AC. Now at least I will be good for cooling down a room or two, which I can do while working, or just to have a nice comfortable place to sleep. Once I have all the interior work down, and the plumbing and electrical grid installed, then I can think about what kind of climate control system I will get for the place. I want a wood burning furnace to use in the winters, but I’m not sure if central A/C is the way to go, or just getting more window units, because there won’t really be that many rooms.
Worried about running out of air filters
The quarantine was bad enough, but now because of all these forest fires everything is turned up another level.
2020 is one corker of a year, isn’t it? Over the last few months my wife and I have played every card game, dice game, board game, video game, and role playing game that we have.
We have played them all to death. The fires have us more trapped and indoors than COVID ever did, thanks to all the smoke in the air, and we have totally run out of things to do. I thought it was tough being trapped inside before, but with all this smoke making the air quality dangerous, we are more trapped than ever! On a whim I went and checked the air filter in our central HVAC system, as I realized i had not changed it in a couple of months. I was blown away at how dirty the air filter was, thanks to all this extra debris and smoke in the air! Even with the doors and windows kept closed at all times, the smoke was infiltrating our house and clogging up the air filter! Thankfully I had a few spare air filters, but just to be safe I kept the dirty one to see if I could clean it up to reuse it. I would prefer not to use an old dirty air filter, but if I have no choice in the matter than I will make do! I hope these fires go away soon, so the air filter thing never becomes a real problem.
Right time for whole house air purifier
The longer this pandemic drags on, the more I realize that we are still just in the early innings of this thing.
As much as we all want to hope and wish it away, that is not the likely outcome. In fact, we are entering a period where staying inside the HVAC security of your home might be more important than ever. That is not great news. But, at the same time, this won’t last forever and we’ll just continue to adjust as best we can. I have gotten fairly comfortable with the fact that I may be working from the HVAC comfort of my home indefinitely. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if our company does away with the office space they pay so much to lease. That being the case, I made a decision recently to give our home the best shot at having the highest quality indoor air possible. This was not that tough to do actually. Having read so many things that directly attributed good immune health to good indoor air quality, I knew I needed to make a change. The HVAC people were happy to help and had a ready answer. So we are now the proud owners of a whole house air purifier. And with the pandemic raging, it just adds a needed security for our peace of mind. It’s nice to know that the whole house air purifier isn’t just another filter. No, this thing is actively destroying airborne contaminants as they enter the HVAC air handler. It’s just one more piece of the puzzle in this prolonged pandemic fight.
Getting the humidity right part of HVAC process
I don’t know which is worse, the humidity or the heat.
Well, I guess that is splitting hairs because we live in a region that experiences plenty of both.
There are times where I am sweating just thinking about leaving the HVAC comfort of my house to venture outside. It’s like a one-two punch when it comes to the heat and humidity. Of course, that combination also helps produce some of the best living conditions on the planet 8 months of the year. But, that four month stretch of deep summer heat can be absolutely withering. It’s a good thing that we have such excellent modern HVAC cooling. Without it, we would be one hot and sweaty bunch. It still blows my mind to hear my grandmother talk about the days of swamp coolers. Those old evaporative coolers helped but they were no real match for the level of heat & humidity we deal with. My grandmother also had to work every single day to be sure the mildew was kept at bay. Those evaporative coolers did mostly nothing to regulate the humidity indoors. Our HVAC takes care of balancing the humidity without our help at all. It’s all part of the process. It starts when the HVAC heat pump starts up. The heat pump pulls heat energy out of the indoor air and exhaust it outside the house. This allows the cooler air being processed by the air handler to be more effective cooling the air in the house. However, when the heat pump pulls out the heat energy, it also yanks a bunch of moisture from the air. The result is a balanced humidity level in a cool house.