I did not have five to eight thousand dollars laying around to spend on a new air conditioner system.
I was telling you about the issue I had with the air conditioner in the crawlspace of my house. This was done long before I moved into this house, so it’s an issue that I inherited, not one I created. Basically, the contractor who installed it was an amateur. The person did terrible work, did not get proper permits, and did not do a level of work that was “up to code.” The AC equipment is located in the crawlspace over my bedroom closet, but it is situated in such a way that it can’t be easily accessed. I had a local HVAC tech come by to check it out and offer a price estimate for the repairs, and he flat-out said that it couldn’t be done. The only way to remedy the situation was to cut that HVAC off of the main power grid, abandon it, and install a new system somewhere else in the attic. I did not have five to eight thousand dollars laying around to spend on a new air conditioner system. On the other hand, this is the Deep South, and the summer months are wicked, so I couldn’t just forgo having any kind of cooling system. I decided to check out the local hardware stores and see what they had in terms of a smaller, more affordable air conditioner. I was blown away by the number of options! I knew about window-mounted AC units, but there were a lot of new, portable air conditioners that were strong enough to cool down one whole side of my home.