This is a tale about an air conditioning system and a little insight into some of the fundamental problems facing our climb out of the economic chaos we face today. My recent experience trying to make my life more energy efficient is an excellent look into the complexities of our modern lives.
My wife and I were fortunate and financially savvy enough to have properly ridden the peaks and valleys of the economic roller coaster of prosperity and recession that will go on forever in our world. We both grew up in households and families that knew the concept of buying cheap and selling high, not overextending yourself, and ensuring that you plan for the future with savings and assets. We both were also lucky to grow up with fathers that were handymen, that knew the value of sweat equity. They grew up in generations including the Great Depression when your own ingenuity and work ethic was far more valuable than a good credit rating.
I inherited that talent from my father and honed it with a stint on a nuclear submarine as a nuclear electrician. One of the responsibilities of submarine duty is becoming qualified on that vessel which meant not just learning your own little skill but having a fairly in-depth knowledge of all major systems on the sub including the plumbing, the air conditioning and environmental systems, the electronics, and the armaments. You went to classes on damage control where you were required to find and fix leaks as water was filling up the compartment you were in. You learned about putting out fires.
By the time I'd left the service, I had this ability to go into just about any task and not only learn and accomplish it but usually to master it with a minimum of training. During my early marriage, before my children were born, I worked as a recreational vehicle technician doing electrical, plumbing, engine maintenance, heating and air conditioning, and sheet metal work.
Part of my family's good fortune financially was being a home buyer years before this latest real estate boom. We lucked into a magnificent house on a half acre of property in the Phoenix area at well below market value. The only drawback to this home was its age so we knew there would be maintenance issues that would spring up. With my skills that was certainly not daunting.
Our first year in this home was a bit of an eye-opener especially during the brutal summer months as we hit electrical bills of over $500. Our prior home had been fairly new and energy efficient so these were more than we bargained for. By blowing a ton of insulation into the attic we were able to bring down those costs substantially so they were manageable but I also had dreams of real future savings when I had a friend in the air conditioning business inspect my unit and he told me it was an older one with a rating of just 10 SEER. He also told me that the outside condensing unit was installed a bad location and contributing to a lack of efficiency.
We looked at the cost of a new unit and it was over $4000 without installation costs. I knew that investment would be recouped by the savings in a few short years so we began saving for it. During that time I did intense research into what would be required for me to do the bulk of the installation work. Without that sweat equity, having the upgrade professionally done, especially with the move of the condensing unit, would have put the costs (in the tens of thousands of dollars) way over the threshold for our budget and recouping them would have taken decades.
My research told me that my skills were perfectly in line with what I'd have to do. I was an accomplished electrician that understood codes and wiring. I had done a huge amount of plumbing in my life so the gas and freon lines would be no major obstacle. I had worked with sheet metal so I knew I could create whatever ductwork changes I needed to do. I could do the trenching for conduit and create the concrete slab the new condensing unit would sit on. The only part of the job that I didn't have explicit training and equipment for would be the actual charging and testing of the system with freon once all the parts were in place. When I know I have a limitation, logic dictates that step will be done by professionals in the business.
A side job of computer programming consulting gave me the extra cash to make the purchase of the new equipment, a state of the art 16 SEER split system that promised a tremendous increase in efficiency, quieter operation, and long life. I planned the install during the spring and early summer of this year as our evaporative cooler would work well then during those dry months and give me ample time to do this job.
Now, when I tackle a job like this, I go beyond building codes, ensuring safety and durabiltiy. The trenching I had to do to lay the electrical conduit had to run through an area by my pool that was crisscrossed by 10 - 15 different water lines and I had to burrow beneath them without damaging them. I imagined the workers an air conditioning company would have employed at minimum wage and the possible consequences of them not using the same level of tender loving care I did when working around those plastic pipes. I used a higher guage of wiring than code called for to go out to the unit, something I generally do for an additional level of safety and durability. I custom fashioned ductwork utilizing a professional sheet metal shop to make the intricate connections to the gas heating unit and air conditioning evaporator unit that fit into a very tight closet in my hallway. Throughout the job I kept finding really poor design and implementation issues with the original installation, some of them that were serious safety concerns. I addressed all of those issues.
This week I finished the work I could perform and came to the final steps in the process, the connection of the new freon lines, their testing and evacuation, the charging of the freon, and the final certification of the work. Some of those steps I could perform myself but I know that a certified air conditioning company would do it professionally, quickly, and have the tools and the current experience to do it right.
Here's where things got strange. I began calling air conditioning companies in the area and got the same story from all of them. If they did not perform all of the work, they would do none of it. In other words, if I wasn't willing to spend $15,000 with these companies to fully install this system, they would not accept me as a paying customer to do the work I could not do even though it would be relatively simple for their technicians to inspect the quality of the work I'd already done and to see that it was professional and up to code.
Now I understand that companies have probably had experience with getting their fingers burned taking over jobs from people that truly are in over their heads and I accept their reluctance but I greatly resent this one formula fits all system of doing business and this complete disconnect from where our world is today.
First, they would never get my business if I had to pay the huge installation costs they would charge for upgrading my system. People in today's economy simply don't have tens of thousands of dollars lying around to spend on new efficient systems with decades required to recoup the costs. They will instead find workarounds or waste their money keeping their old systems limping along. It might be noted that had I called any of these companies to come and do maintenance or take over the servicing of my old, unsafe, and inefficient system, they would have done so in a heartbeat.
Secondly, our country is entering probably one of the worst financial eras any of us will see in our lifetimes, a time when companies, in order to survive, will have to become very creative in getting business from a cash strapped citizenry. Although I understand reluctance in not completely controlling the product you work in, bad economies make it a certainty that this model will become more and more prevalent as dollars get tighter. It would be a wonderful time to own an auto salvage yard. These companies that would not provide the product I needed from them suffer from an elitism that success gives. It will be their undoing.
Third, I could have lied to this company, found someone to hook up all the fittings to this system, and then called them to say that I had a freon leak that needed fixing, that the original company that had installed the system had gone out of business. Believe me, I could have gotten their business had I been creative and deceptive. Instead they'll never get a dime of my money for their shortsightedness. I won't lie to get what I want.
Since then, I've gotten numerous phone numbers from friends in the business of people that understand the true economic model in place here and will come and do the work I need. All are independent contractors not tied to the corporate inflexibility so inherent when companies get to a certain size and lose touch with their true customers. These people will get my money, not the $15,000 those huge places require to even be talked to but honest pay for the expertise they offer.
At the end of all of this, I will have made a huge contribution to not only my family household but also to the greater good of our community because I'll have lowered my energy carbon usage and spent money in our economy. It is also the first step I had to accomplish in my ultimate goal of substantially dropping our energy usage by installing a solar electric system on our house. It would have been a rather useless step had I kept using that old inefficient air conditioning system.
Just an aside now because I know I'll be hit by people that believe that I'm skirting the system by not having a licensed contractor perform all the work and that a true liberal believes strongly in the governmental excess that has created this nightmare of paperwork and certification required to make even a tiny change to your property. Well I'm not that true liberal in that sense. There's enough Libertarian in my soul that knows we've gone far beyond reasonable in some areas of governmental intrusion into our lives and I don't feel it's beyond the realm of progressive thoughts to explore that side of philosophy.
My utility company offers a small rebate for making the upgrade that I'm doing to my home air conditioning system. At first glance it seems completely reasonable until one gets to the actual application. You find out quickly that it's not good enough to just purchase and install the application yourself but it must be signed off by an approved air conditioning contractor, the exact guys that want to lock you into the $15,000 on top of the cost of the unit so their minimum wage ditch diggers can break through your swimming pool piping while running conduit. This is the dark side of the whole governmental energy rebate system. It always comes with a gotcha built in the political back rooms with some special interest group such as the lobby representing the manufacturers and installers of the equipment. Some of it is understandable but it serves us all as progressives to understand that the things we push for will always profit someone we don't intend and we must work relentlessly to remove as many of these conditions as possible.
I can't wait until I see what red tape awaits me when I go to buy the grid tie-in photovoltaic system and tell the salesman I'll be doing the bulk of the work myself.