When Bigger Is Better

This past week, we bit the financial bullet and got a bigger air conditioner for our living room. We first got one for our living room about a year ago, a 1.5 horsepower model, after several years of attempting to survive the hot season without it. But spending all your time at home in the bedroom (where we first installed an air conditioner so that we could at least get a good night’s sleep!) loses its appeal real fast. We felt like prisoners in our own home! So last year, we had a split A/C unit installed in the living room.

It was great... at first. We could now sit comfortably in our living room whenever we were home, eating our meals, entertaining guests, watching TV, or reading books. But when we came back from Josh & Melissa’s wedding, we noticed that it no longer cooled things down like it used to. So we got the installer over to check it out. He said it was low on Freon and charged it up. However, since it obviously had a leak somewhere, he had the entire system checked... and couldn’t find a thing.

But it never worked properly since. And with the advent of the hot season here, we were beginning to run into days that required a retreat to the bedroom again. So rather than throwing good money after bad in retrying to find the leak in the old machine, we had it taken out and a more powerful 2 horsepower model put in. Wow, what a difference!

Yes, it uses more electricity per se, but because it’s more powerful, we don’t need to have it running at top capacity all the time. Which means the compressor (the major power consumer of the unit) only kicks in as needed. So in the long run, we’ll probably pay about the same in electricity costs. But at least we’ll be able to do so in relative comfort :)  Excuse me while I go and find a blanket.