Murphy's Law

Sunday night, right before Ib came to bed, our swamp cooler stopped working. A lot of older houses in the desert use swamp coolers (sometimes called evaporative coolers) rather than A/C units. It's a giant blower that pushes air through water-filled pads, which cools it, and then into the central ductwork of the house. They are much more efficient on the old electric bill. And since it's rarely humid in the desert (except during monsoon season), they work great!


Until they stop working, that is. This is the actual temperature INSIDE the house when I got home today. With temps reaching 105°, this has been the hottest week of the summer, so far. It just figures!

The thing was making an awful racket this past weekend, and Ib climbed up to see what he could see. It wasn't pretty. He replaced a couple pieces, but with the bottom of the squirrel cage enclosure rusted out, there wasn't enough suction. The motor kept overheating and shutting itself off. So we were forced to buy a new cooler today.

Ib stopped at the local plumbing and cooling store before work this morning and paid for it. Then, he and his boss borrowed a truck from work and went to pick it up at lunch. They took it to the house and lifted it up onto the roof with a rope. It weighs about 180 pounds.

Then, being the nice guy that he is, his boss let him out of work early so he could come home and get started on removing the old one and installing the new one...for his poor, suffering pregnant wife's sake.

I was really hoping I'd get to do the honors of shoving the old one off the roof...but that would have required getting on the roof in the first place. I'm OK going up ladders, but have trouble coming down. And, in my condition, Ib wouldn't allow me to get up there anyway.

For his first cooler removal and installation, things went surprisingly smooth. I did get to help a little. I took the power cord off the old cooler motor, because the new motor didn't come with one. And I made a pretty good tool-fetcher, too.

When we flipped the switch, though, nothing happened. We checked a couple things, but had no juice. My old supervisor, Mike, graciously agreed to come over since he just lives a few blocks away. Here, our breaker went bad. So he hooked up the cooler power to a different breaker so we could get it up and running for tonight. Ib has to go pick up a couple new breakers and then Mike said he'd stop by again later this week and get us all fixed up right. The new cooler is nice and quiet! And it's already cooling the house down. Props to my awesome husband for climbing up there and sweating all afternoon to make me more comfortable. And a giant "Thank You!" to Mike for interrupting his evening to help us out.

Too bad monsoons are supposed to start tomorrow...