Why you ask? Not because of the best mullet in the free world, but because his stuff always worked the first time. I guess he wasn’t trying to fix anything long term with that kind of haywire stuff. I think he’s the kind of guy that would want to fix something the right way. But no I senor.

So when we last left our heroes they were shoe sole deep in water in the basement trying to fix the AC unit with some sheet metal and lots of glue. Well that seemed to be a good idea. So after we sealed the new pan and coil back in the unit we crossed our fingers and flipped the switch… bwaaawwwwwwwwww. (that’s the good AC noise) yah! High fives all around. lets go have a beer… well that lasted for about 2 days. The house instantly got 10 degrees cooler and we assumed success. But 2 days later the house was back to it’s sweaty self despite the AC constantly running. I decided to investigate.

I put my hand on the side… “what’s cooler than being cold”… ICE COLD. I knew this was a bad thing. So I took to the task of dismantling the sheet metal box that the coil was held in and what did I find inside? Oh just a 2 foot ice cube. The unit had completely iced over and the ice had taken the shape of the vent. I turned it off and went off to sulk while it deiced. The next morning I had an epiphany… we had sealed off the airflow with the sheet metal we glued to the bottom of the pan. (the pan is shaped like a donut) so the next day we took it out again and used tin snips to cut out the middle of the pan. We put it back in and hoped for the best. It was sure to work this time.

but…

After a few days Charlie noticed that the laundry room was full of water… again. So after a few days of depressing shop-vac-ing water I decided that it was time to give it another go. So this time instead of gently popping open the sides of the vent, I grabbed the hammer and ripped of the side like Superman. (opening June 30th) And I see there that we’ve done something right, the pan isn’t leaking! It’s spilling over! I knew that the drainpipe had to be blocked somewhere. so I poked it a little bit with a coat hanger. That didn’t work, so frustration set in and I hulked-out and ripped off the pipe. water spilled everywhere… and what was the problem you ask… to answer that you have to know this. You see we had already done this once, so getting the coil out took half the time, getting it back in went smoother, but we only had enough plumbers epoxy to do this one time. So to re-attach the drain pipe to the pan Jesse used a LOT of some kind of industrial model glue. Which like all of our well thought out plans involved some string and duct tape.

Well, back to me holding this pipe in my hand getting dirty rusty water spilled on me. You see this model glue stuff was really flexible when it dried and it dried slowly. Well it had formed some kind a booger-like shield over the inside of the pipe, completely sealing it off. So after I removed all the gunk I was ready to reseal it and get this party started. again.

This is where I should have stopped…

but…

I decided to do things the right way and screw this plastic pipe joiner back in there the right way (something we didn’t do the first time because it was stripped out. Well I got one end back in.. but then I couldn’t rotate the other end because it was attached to the wall. We had some extra pipe corners laying around so I thought I’d just cut the pipe, rotate it, then slip these on and whammo, done. So I hack off the pipe, with a large serrated kitchen knife cause that’s the only cutting instrument we had. That’s when I realize that the corners don’t fit, then trying to unscrew the end of the pipe I break it with my kung fu grip. Everything is going swimmingly at this point. So I have to race to the hardware store 5 minutes before they close and look for these larger corner pieces to fix this whole contraption. AHHHHHH.

So anyway…

I THINK we’ve finally done it. I THINK the seals will hold. Everything is screwed in the “right” way and I THINK it’s working properly… of course I’m going to wait a week for final judgment.

Pheww. Longest Post Evar.

Later!