Ants in the electrics

Well, as usual my little spurt of blogging energy lasted for all of five days before going on hiatus, but at least it was a short break this time. I can't remember what I was doing Tuesday that kept me from blogging, but I definitely have a (you'll pardon the expression) valid excuse for Wednesday that had a carryover to Thursday. Namely, my air conditioner.

No, it wasn't the newly installed thermostat; it would appear my rudimentary wiring skills were adequate to that task, as the thermostat has been working just dandy. The compressor, unfortunately, after running on demand from said thermostat for almost three days, decided sometime Wednesday to get cranky again. (In a way I can't blame it -- temperatures in the 90s with high humidity is enough to make anyone cranky. On the other hand, dealing with the high temp and humidity is its job.) I came home to an 85 degree sweatbox and a compressor that would do no more than give off a loud hum. This time, repeated efforts to get it reset and running failed, and I spent a very uncomfortable night with my small fan aimed at me to at least keep the (sweltering) air moving.

On Thursday I placed a rather urgent call to my A/C contractor (temperatures in the 90s were again in the forecast) and then enjoyed my overcooled office till he called me around 4 PM to say he was on his way. I headed home to a stifling house, where we found the thermostat sending and the compressor still not receiving. He pulled the cover off the compressor unit and found...

Ants. All through the little box where some electric doohickey (a relay, maybe? He never did say what it was) sits, scores of little ants running around. "That's your problem," he said. Apparently he has seen this problem before: ants are for some reason attracted into the compartment, where they get inside the electrical doohickey and get zapped, gumming up the works until the signal from the thermostat no longer starts the compressor and fan. So this was clearly more serious than last fall's ants in the mailbox problem. (Though I'm wondering if there's some kind of pattern appearing here.)

After a quick replacement of the gummed up doohickey and a heavy application of Raid ("No, it won't hurt anything in there," he said), he replaced the cutoff switch and bingo! It works again! Hallelujah!

Five hours later it had managed to finally catch up with the accumulated heat load and I was blissfully able to sleep. In the meantime, blogging was pretty much the last thing on my mind, not least because I had brought home some unfinished work from the office when I truncated my work day. So, two posts today, not caught up but not too bad.