Spoke Too Soon!

Well we thought the new heat pump/furnace system was working okay. But we found out differently this weekend. Sunday and Monday mornings were cold in the morning, less than 35 degrees. It was cold enough that the heat pump was not able to contribute to heating the house. That means the furnace is supposed to kick in and provide heat in auxiliary mode until the heat pump can get some warmth out of the air.

Well the temperature in the house dropped to under 60 degrees no matter what we did. Remember this system has not even been in three weeks yet. Washington Energy sent out a tech today to figure out what was wrong. Turns out the idiots who did the installation didn’t turn the gas back on to the furnace. A gas furnace needs gas to provide heat (duh), and since it wasn’t getting any gas, we weren’t getting any heat.

Seriously folks, if you live in an area serviced by Washington Energy Services I suggest you talk to at least one other company before deciding on WES to do any work for you.

The Heat Pump’s In...

And it seems to be working. Of course the hot weather is gone, and has been since the installation so I don’t know how well it will do with the cooling during hot weather. But so far the system seems to be working fine. The only problem was that they did not install the thermostat we paid for. They claimed it was possibly due to the type of wiring we had, and that the one we got installed was actually an upgraded model.

Not sure I believe that, but this one seems to work fine so we aren’t making an issue out of it.

Let me just say that if you live in the Puget Sound area, make sure to get at least one other bid than just a bid from Washington Energy Services. I think they are a bit high priced and they can be a bit difficult to work with. That’s all I’ll say on that subject.

No More Birds…

For the first time in thirteen years I no longer have the budgies talking (singing) to me as I head in and out of the garage. I recently found that I was having a difficult time getting into the mood to take care of the birds on a daily basis like they need. Since that isn’t fair to the birds; and can even be deadly to them if you go to long without taking care of them, I thought it was time to get rid of my birds and equipment. (p.s., if you want to see what my birds looked like you can check them out on my web page at http://mysite.verizon.net/resom1a2/avirypho1.htm.)

A fellow breeder and exhibitor who lives nearby bought out my entire stock of birds and all my equipment. It’s kind of strange having a garage that is actually able to hold a car now, instead of being full of birds and equipment.

I am pretty proud of what I was able to do with my birds. I made champion exhibitor within a few years and had established a very well known line of Lutino budgies (a yellow version of an albino with pink eyes).

Help, I Should Be Sleeping!

Here it is 10:45 am which is prime sleeping time when you are a grave shift worker and I am wide awake. Washington Energy is here today putting in our new furnace and heat pump and someone has to be here with them all day. And of course I got elected because I’m normally home during the day.

Almost as frustrating, I can’t access my main computer since that room is where they are working to replace everything. So I am on my older laptop upstairs and for some reason it wants to hang up every time I have more than one program at a time open. Guess it’s about time to check for malware and other problems. Hopefully I can get this posted first.

Looking forward to using the heat pump, although now that it is fall I probably won’t benefit from the cooling abilities until next year. We are pretty excited about this change, heat pumps are supposed to be pretty efficient so maybe there will be some energy (cost..) savings.

Oh tomorrow I get to stay up all day also. The electrical inspection is sometime tomorrow and they won’t give you a specific time. If I’m lucky I hope to get back on schedule before I have to go to work this weekend.

Happy Birthday Delores!

A very special Happy Birthday wish to my wife Delores. She hits the big 60 September 1.

I’ve been lucky enough to spend almost 23 of those years with her.

(Delores is on the left standing with Lee Ann Womack at a recent concert)

Birthday Wishes

Some August birthday wishes (a few late)

I want to start doing birthday wishes to our family members, so let’s start with everyone in August

Happy Birthday

Aug 8 – Grandson Justin Yuhas
Aug 20 – Son-in-law Danny McCants
Aug 21 – Daughter Diana Calderon
Aug 21 – Granddaughter Samantha Calderon
Aug 27 – Son-in-law Silao Filao

A Rant on Courtesy…

We had an appointment for 6 pm this evening for Washington Energy Services to come to the house and estimate a full replacement system for our furnace. More than likely several thousand dollars of work. At 6:55 pm, the guy calls to say he’s just leaving his previous appointment and won’t be here for another 15-20 minutes (can I really believe that?).

Told him to just go ahead and go on home and we’d call the company to reset an appointment. Maybe if they can make us a heck of a deal we’ll consider using them instead of one of the many other companies in the Everett area who provide the same service.

What I want to know; if he had a cell phone available to call me at 6:55 pm why couldn’t he have used that cell phone an hour earlier to tell us what was going on? Is that not a common courtesy?