Well, dang it

The good news: the air conditioning unit itself is fine. And the problem can be fixed.

The bad news: whatever I choose, it's going to be expensive. And will have to wait until Tuesday to be fixed.

(Boy darn, even though I'm spending money hand over fist here, am I glad I bought the window unit air conditioner. Because otherwise, I don't know how I'd manage between now and then. I suppose I could find someone from church who would have let me stay with them, but I hate to ask and I also get uncomfortable dealing with people I don't know WELL well on a semi-intimate (like, sharing a bathroom) basis.)

The blower and circuit board are both broken. Fixing just those would run close to $1000, and the guy warned me, it sometimes takes a while to get Carrier parts here. ("Ain't this place a geographical oddity...")

I will say that now that I think about it, I'd been worried about the blower for a while; towards the end of the winter, there were days when it sounded like it was "whistling" or making other strange noises. And the other night I felt by the vent in the bathroom and thought, "This thing doesn't seem to be pushing air like it should."

The other two options, which he did not push, were to replace the WHOLE DANG SYSTEM (including the AC unit, which is currently fine, but will be a bit of an effort to replace when its time comes, as it is one of the old - gasp - Freon units and will require a larger coil). That's like $8000.

The third option, and the one I chose, costs about two and a half times the blower replacement, but that's to change out the entire furnace unit - new blower, new board, new pilot, new filter assembly, some new ducting. They could do that Tuesday and the unit they install has a 5 year warranty. (The blower by itself would have one year).

Well. I haven't spent MOST of my federal tax refund yet (I ordered the chair but most of the refund is still intact....had thought of getting a new digital camera and maybe some new cookware, but not now). So that's going to partly cover the new unit.  I wanted to do something I could just write a check for, not having to wrangle with 'financing.' I could do the whole shebang with either financing or depleting my savings account to a scary-low level, or I could more comfortably do the furnace. (This is why I am generally pretty frugal - I don't have an iPhone, I don't have a lot of the electronic gadgets people have, I don't buy expensive clothes or shoes....)

The old furnace IS 20 years old - he showed me the code that indicated it was a 1994 model. He said the new one would be more efficient (not that natural gas is horrifically expensive at the moment) but would also be more reliable. (No code lockouts, I presume).

He told me that I could call him when I decided. (I didn't want to commit just then, though I was leaning to the mid-price option of the new furnace). He assured me the new furnace would have "minimal changes for code" which sounds like Famous Last Words to me but I'm going to be hopeful.

I wound up calling him back sooner than I planned (I planned on waiting til this afternoon) but when I went out to run to the bank and take the recycling to the center, I found the little leather folder that he kept all his receipts and stuff in - he had put it on top of his truck and it had fallen off into the street.

So I used that as an opening and called him and told him I had it, and that I decided I wanted the furnace option. They can come out after I get out of class Tuesday morning and install it, should take half a day.

But, ouch. So no antiquing for me today, or for a while - I'm still going to do "big" grocery shopping and also see if the new Simply Knit UK is in, but otherwise keep the purchasing minimal for a while.

I am very grateful I'm blessed to have a career where these kinds of things wind up being more annoyances that lead me to curtail my "discretionary" spending for a while, rather than being an issue of "Okay, I won't have air conditioning this summer and I'll have to save up money before the fall comes and I need a working blower on the furnace." Or having to do financing where I pay interest on the thing I am buying instead of just paying for the thing itself.