Shiny, Capt'n
We don’t need no steenkin’ repairmen. We’re Kirbys. Together, me ‘n my man have built a barn and an art studio, remodeled the kitchen, and converted a garage to a dining room. Like a toddler who’s tied her shoes for the first time, we did it “all by ourselves.”
Unfortunately, in the absence of repairmen, our work force is reduced to one man and one small scrawny woman, meaning there isn’t much “heavy” in “lifting.”
The Discovery of Gravity
In the desert southwest, “air conditioning” is another way of saying “swamp cooler.” Recently, there’s been a trend toward real air conditioning, but the majority of homes are still cooled by swamp coolers. Despite a simple design, the damn things never work right. At any given time, you can expect to see a neighbor on his roof, head buried in the cooler, curses echoing off the metal sides. Often, you’re that neighbor.
A few years back, our swamp cooler reached a state of irreparable, aided and abetted by our hard-as-diamond water. (Seriously, you can cut glass with this water.) Off we trooped to our favorite church, the home improvement store (10% of our earnings, tithed weekly) where we purchased a brand new cooler. We loaded it on the truck and brought it home.
The installation of a swamp cooler can be managed by a moderately intelligent chimpanzee. It’s a pity we didn’t have one handy, since an adult chimp is several times stronger than a human. See, the issue isn’t installing the machine; it’s getting it up on the fucking roof.
Removing the old cooler was a piece of cake–gravity!
“It’s really heavy,” I observed, helpfully, after we’d struggled to get the new one down off the truck.
“I have an idea,” said my husband, light bulb shining over his head. Off he scurried, returning with a rope and a ladder. The plan: tied the rope around the cooler, then slide it up the ladder onto the roof, me pulling from atop the roof, him pushing from below. What could go wrong?
Well, not much until the cooler reached the top of the ladder. At which point I wasn’t pulling the thing up so much as sideways. My beloved, meanwhile, having pushed a hunk of metal up a ladder, was exhausted.
“Hold it!” he squeaked.
“I am,” I said, as the cooler succumbed to gravity and started to edge down the ladder. I followed it, skiing across the gravel-covered roof. Out in the paddock, the horse neighed, no doubt equine laughter. The neighbors reached for the phone, ready to dial 911.
I’d like to say that overwhelming love saved the day, that I held on expressly to save my beloved from being flattened by a cooler. Mostly, I was imagining the hassle of trying to return the now busted cooler to the store. “I dunno. It looked like that when we opened the box. Twas already broke. Gimme my money back.”
Driving Darth Vader
Darth Vader is our air compressor. Darth is five feet of shiny black steel, and a heavy motor. At the home improvement store, Darth was strapped, standing upright, to a wooden pallet and hefted onto our truck with a forklift. The drive home was cautious with slow accelerations and decelerations.
Darth made it home safely.
We backed up to the garage, got out and groaned with the realization that we were fresh out of forklifts.
My beloved devised a clever ramp made of the discards from the woodpile out back. (We’re a homeowner’s association’s worst nightmare. If we had a HOA–we don’t–our house would have disappeared under a pile of violation notices.)
I eyed the ramp dubiously and reminded hubby of the great swamp cooler incident. Never fear; he’d thought of that. This time, he’d stand on the truck, holding the ropes. I’d take the ramp, keeping Darth from falling sideways. (At least, we didn’t kid ourselves into thinking I could actually slow its descent.)
It started well …
Darth easily slid a few feet down the ramp. Then the ramp failed. Not failed entirely as it slowed Darth and I’s rapid descent to Earth. “Wheeee!”
Darth hit the ground with a loud thump. Between the ropes and my efforts, Darth landed upright and intact (and not on me). “Well, it’s down now,” I observed.
The horse snorted. The neighbors shook their heads.
Down the Whirlpool, The Learning Curve Flattens
Never let it be said that my husband and I aren’t learning primates. After two near-death experiences with heavy machinery, we’ve now upgraded our ramp system. Tah-dah! I bring you, The Ramp that Was Formerly the Kitchen Door. It’s ugly. It’s sturdy. It’s helped us offload a washer and a dryer.
Now let’s hope the swamp cooler doesn’t die anytime soon.
I scared the dogs I was laughing so loudly! Hilarious!!!
So, did they take the swamp cooler back and believe you?
Hee, hee.
My mom has this trick where, after the first thing breaks (just out of warranty) where she buys a second thing, then puts the broken thing in new thing’s box and returns it: “It’s broken.”
When my swamp cooler went out four times in a single summer, I perservered. After all, pumps are only $20ish, pads $100 a year or so, and although the cooler’s all but useless during the rainy season (which is usually the height of summer here in El Paso), what’s a few weeks of murdering round-the-clock heat, especially when you work from home and have a weird probably-auto-immune-type thing going on that kicks into doubletime when you get hot and can’t get cooled down compared to the expense of an AC conversion?
Then a friend pointed out that it wasn’t just the fourth time that summer, it was the tenth time since I’d bought the house. And since every one of those service calls (I’m single and can’t do more than the basic stuff on my own, thanks to my new probably-auto-immune friend) had cost between $40 and $70, I had already sunk a HUGE amount of money into this inefficient beast. She had a point, but in my mind having already committed $400-700 to the Swamp Cooler That Wasn’t Big Enough In The First Place was even MORE reason to stick with it.
Then they came to turn the cooler off, and turn the furnace on. “Who turned your furnace on last year?”
“Uh, you guys did.”
“We did? Do you remember *how*?”
Calling in the senior team member ultimately revealed that something was broken – like, broken off and gone missing. And this “something” (I don’t remember what it was) was not part of the original furnace design. In fact, the furnace had been put in with the house itself – in 1971. The lady from the office, after figuring this out by researching model numbers, asked me accusingly, “You haven’t replaced that furnace in 40 years?!” and I replied, “No, *I* haven’t replaced that furnace in THREE years – the previous owners are guilty of the other 37 years.”
A temporary fix for the furnace, not guaranteed to work, would have been $700. Replacing the furnace, by itself, would have been $2200. Doing an AC conversion at a later date would be about $5200. Replacing the furnace and the AC at the same time, piggybacking the labor, would be $6300. I did ask them to leave the old swamp cooler unit, instead of disposing of it – I took out *at least* $400 worth of stress-relief on that sucker before my son needed the baseball bat for actual baseball. (c;
Anyway, when they started talking about hiring the heavy equipment to get the new AC unit up onto the roof, I DEMANDED that they put it on the ground, because I don’t know when the previous owners last replaced the roof, either! I had visions of them getting that behemoth in place, unstrapping the straps, everyone letting go… and the whole thing crashing on through to land on my bed.
Elayne. *Snerk.* Ah, adventures with repairmen. Reading your account, I finding myself thanking Dog that my husband is so handy. I mean, while our repair jobs sometimes risk our life and limb, at least I don’t have to deal with some jackass sneering at my antiquated furnace.