When my air conditioner suddenly quit in the middle of a holiday weekend, I wasn’t quite sure what to do.
I really didn’t want to call for after-hours repairs and pay the additional fees.
I also wasn’t thrilled with the idea of going without air conditioning for several days when the outside temperature was steadily in the upper eighties. With the high humidity levels, my house started to feel overheated and sticky within a couple of hours. I opened up all the windows, hoping a breeze would cool things down, but there the outside air was completely stagnant. I then dug around in the attic and found four old box fans. Plugging them in and adjusting them to max capacity provided a very small amount of relief. Out of desperation, I mentioned the problem with my air conditioner to my neighbor. He’s always bragging about how handy he is and offering to provide home repairs. He was more than willing to fix my air conditioner for a case of beer. He showed up at my house with a very impressive looking toolbox. I was hopeful that he could live up to his promises. He proceeded to take the cooling unit entirely apart. There were parts scattered everywhere. He spent nearly six hours working on fixing and putting the system back together again. When he finished, I was worse off than before. Instead of refusing to start up, the system made this alarming screeching sound and provided no air whatsoever. I ended up calling for emergency repairs from a licensed contractor, who informed me that my neighbor had caused extensive damage. Because of him, I paid a much higher bill to replace a bunch of parts.