Tuesday, June 17, 2008

A/C Update & Garden Picks

Update on our a/c situation. We had a guy come out and look at it. The fan motor on the outside unit is toast. We was on his way to get another one for about 150.00 and Mikie called me and I stopped him. We were planing on replacing the whole unit anyways, why not do it now. This guy does not do installs so he gave us a name of someone, who has not returned my call. The guy did not charge anything, he said he did not fix the problem so he couldn't charge. I know everyone else would have easily charged 85.00 for just coming out to look. Our electric company will do a low interest loan for anyone putting in a new heat pump. I printed out there list of vender's and called most in my area. I was talking to one guy and he told me about a dual fuel heat pump, where I keep my existing gas furnace and take out our a/c unit and put in a heat pump outside. The gas furnace acts as the back up system. He said this is a 1/3 the cost of changing out everything. He also said he would temporally fix the motor until they can replace the unit. I am waiting on him to call me back with his price. I really think this is the smart way to go. We will spend less money. Mikie is concerned about the gas furnace being older. My dad and I argued that on a gas furnace there is not much to go bad and it usually last longer than electric parts.

We have started getting veggies out of the garden. We have gotten several cucumbers and a few squash. We have been staying at my moms house since we cannot cook anything or even use the microwave. She had started cooking the chicken and stewed potatoes last night when we got there. They had already picked the cucumbers and squash so I prepared them. I made cucumbers in salt water, cucumbers w/onions in vinegar, and cucumbers w/onions in Italian dressing. We also made fried corn that was frozen from last year. I fried the squash w/cornbread covering them. I fried them in canola oil. My mom said she prefers grease but I told her the canola was much better for her. Mikie even tried the squash and said it wasn't bad. He won't hardly eat anything out of the garden except the corn,green beans and peppers. It took forever for him to eat the fried corn. I'm not sure where city people think their food comes from.

6 comments:

tina said...

Yes, do replace it. We had to replace ours about six years ago. Cheaper I think than fixing it. These things don't last forever. I love Action Air for their great customer service. Did an awesome job. Good luck!

The Jillybean said...

I would replace it too. We fixed ours once and ended up replacing it not even 4 months later.

Sarah said...

We had ours worked on about 4 yrs ago and it lasted a while. We are in the process of replaceing it.

Tina, did you go thru the electric company for financing? I am looking into it.

tina said...

No, no financing throught the electric company. I have CEMC and not even sure if they do it, though I did look into it. Lightening had struck ours and knocked out the compressor, homeowners paid for replacing the compressor but we said just replace the whole thing and we paid the difference. I do think those low or no interest financing loans with the electric company are pretty good deals. Good luck. Plus they have to be energy efficient.

Sarah said...

We also have CEMC and they do have the program for the low interest loans. If we get a seer 14 or higher it is 6%. If we get below that it is 8%.

tina said...

Definitely go with the SEER of 14, but at either interest rate, I think it is a pretty good deal. I tried to get this deal and they apparently were not offering it when I needed it.