DIY in Orbit
My credentials as a do-it-yourselfer are well-established. I’ve built sheds, installed roofing shingles, made concrete sidewalks and platforms, and worked for several months on a commercial framing crew. I’ve sanded, plastered, painted, sawed, raked, planted and toiled upon the soil like a serf or tenant farmer. Yet, when it comes to installing appliances, I’d be the first to admit that I’m ‘challenged’. Yes, the truth is irrefutable: the installation of even a simple appliance is, for me, a formidable challenge, a study in frustration, a short-circuit of functional abilities. I haven’t had the courage to try it yet, but I’m sure that I would fail in the simple task of installing a toaster on our kitchen counter top. Small wonder that, when our through-the-wall air conditioner went out, I rushed to visit the local Home Appliance Store (which shall remain unnamed) for a chat with their ‘Installation Professionals’.
“Sure, we”ll send someone out to take a look,” we were told.
Gleeful and grateful, my wife and I headed home misty-eyed with the bright prospect of a seamless installation ahead of us. This feeling of new appliance euphoria continued into the following days as the ‘Installation Professional’ arrived to take measurements. Did I manage to hide the smug, self-satisfied look I had on my face as the ‘Pro’ explained why it was a good idea to hire a professional. Fact is, we needed little convincing.
There is the matter of ‘sleeves’, Type A, B, or C, as the case may be, and the descriptions of each type are a closely guarded Homeland Security Secret. One may strain the eyes peering at air-conditioner boxes to gain some insight into this mystery, or spend days perusing internet sites without so much as a clue. No problem, though, the ‘Installation Professional’ will solve that one. Another riddle to be confronted is the fact that through-the-wall air conditioners have different width, depth, and height. The chances of matching up a modern air-conditioner sleeve and appliance with one that dates from the day the Beatles arrived in New York City are nil, zero, nada. No problem though, the ‘Installation Professionals’ will know which one will fit the thickness of the walls, and the size of the existing opening. Let’s not even bother to mention the electrical possibilities. I know what you’re thinking. I’m a complete idiot. I should have installed it myself.
Fast forward. The Installation Professional has ordered an air-conditioner from his company warehouse and it is to be delivered pronto. True to his word, it arrives a few days later and we put in a call to him. Punctuality is not his problem-he’s at our house a day later, strips open the box with his carpet knife and starts shaking his head.
“Won’t fit,’ he says.
Our conversation at this point does not bear verbatim repeating, but let me relate some facts:
1) Time spent on this project so far – 3 hours.
2) A large open box with an oversized heavy air-conditioner complete with Type A, B, or C ‘sleeve’ sits in the middle of our living room.
3) We are in the middle of a summer heat wave.
4) The Installation Professional and I have different ideas about what to do next.
I will relate just a snippet (redacted) of the conversation we had:
“Take it back with you and get us one that fits, install it, and we will be happy campers once again”.
“I can’t do that. The warehouse has to do that.”
The warehouse? Think of the telephone conversation possibilities therein. Call me nasty, call me a curmudgeon, but call me busy, too, as I call the Home Appliance Store Headquarters to cancel the order. Then I make a phone call to my credit card company to cancel payment. A few days later, the ‘warehouse’ people come to collect their air-conditioner from our living room floor. A week after that the bill comes from the Home Appliance Headquarters with a total of cost and labor. What labor? What cost? What air-conditioner? Fast forward, fast forward….it’s months before they remove the charges and stop billing us.
Meanwhile, I am busy with crowbar, chisel, hammer and assorted other tools removing the old air-conditioner and type A, B, or C sleeve. I’ve managed to leave the brick wall intact, but I’ve had to take out the previous framing. I’m grimy with sweat. My wife is irritable in the heat. I think of that old cliche: ‘They don’t build ’em like they used to’. Meaning the air-conditioner I’ve removed, the old one, weighs about ten times as much as the one I’m installing. I’ve managed to get it to the outside of the house to the deck with a variety of Rube Goldberg maneuvers, but haven’t got the strength to get it down the stairs. I decide to dismantle it. They don’t build them like they used to. I thought of having that phrase tattooed on my biceps and rolling a pack of lucky strike cigarettes into my tee-shirt short sleeve, size XL.
You have to appreciate the sixties. They were building our old air conditioner about the same time they were trying to achieve parity with the Russian Sputniks. They encased the appliance in a bulletproof shell that didn’t even smudge when I kicked it off the deck onto the ground. It was strung with miles of fail-safe heavy-gauge copper wire, a tangle of redundant systems designed to operate in wet, dry, arctic, or desert conditions. It was nucleic. The birth of the nuclear age had inspired appliance engineers to unprecedented heights. I thought of shipping it off to Iraq or Afghanistan. If only.
Half disassembled, it was still too heavy to lift into my pick-up truck. There was an unusual round black cylinder of considerable heft and size with piping leading into and out of it. That cylinder seemed to account for much of the residual weight. I could get that apart. If there were anything in there, it couldn’t be much. I wrenched, sliced, sledge-hammered and finally ended up with a hacksaw cutting into the last pipe holding it to the rest of the appliance. That was when a furious jet of Freon gas, imprisoned since the Kennedy assassination, sprang to freedom in a tornado like and interminable gust. I dove behind the huge steel casement, head covered by my hands. The black cylinder wheeled, spun and fumed about the yard. I lifted my head up and peered at the black cylinder, finally come to rest after knocking over one of our lawn chairs. I had a vision of the Installation Professional tethered to our old air-conditioner, space-junk in orbit, high above the earth with the dead Russian Sputniks. I opened my eyes, got to my feet, smiling with satisfaction. Certainly, our old air conditioner was better constructed than Russian Sputniks. They don’t make ’em the way they used to.
