Summer is Here

Ok, officially summer hasn't started yet. At least not for most of the country. But it was 90 degrees yesterday and 92 today. It is supposed to be over 90 degrees all this week. Historically once we start having 90+ degree temperatures we don't stop until sometime in October or November. Sure we'll have an occasional cooler day. But not many and not often.

For the high desert, summer has arrived.

I knew this for sure when my dear wife looked at me yesterday and asked what I had planned for this weekend.

I have been married long enough to know that the moment that question is asked, it doesn't really matter what my plans for the weekend were. They are about to change.

So my dear wife smiled sweetly, hugged my neck and asked if I would turn on the cooler this weekend. What else could I do. I said yes. After all she promised me a back rub.

So today I turned on the cooler.

Simple. Right? You just turn it on.

Well turning on the cooler is simple. All you have to do is set the thermostat and click the little knob over to low or high cool. However before you do that you have to do a couple other little things.

First, turn off the the furnace. Turn off the gas and unplug the furnace. Disconnect the waterline to the humidifier, empty and clean the humidifier. Open the flue above the furnace and put the baffle plate back in. Then seal off the the vents for the humidifier.

Then you go through the house with a ladder and remove the upduct covers from all the upducts. While in each room, check the openings on all the vents. If the room has a ceiling fan, click the direction knob so the the fan will start blowing down for summer.

Now go outside to the cooler. Take off the two side panels, the top panel, and the front. Uncoil the water line and the drain line from inside. Connect the water line to the feed line from the house. Connect the drain line to the pump. Clean out the inside of the cooler with the hose, check the condition of the pads, motor, belt, fill valve and water distribution system.

In the case of today, you stop at this point and run to home depot for a new belt and scale eliminator. While at home depot, you have to wander through the garden section, go out to the truck to get the number off the belt, visit with friends in front of the BBQ grills, go back out to the truck because your friends made you forget the number, stroll through the power tool section trying not to drool on the new toys. Then you go back out to the truck, again, to double check the number on the old belt because you are too vain to carry the old one into the store. Most men believe that it's cooler looking to just walk up to the rack, pick out the item you need and walk away. Never talk to a man while he is picking out an item in Home Depot. Until the item is in his hand the only thought going through his mind is 4R-630, 4R-630, 4R-630, 4R-630, 4R-630, 4R-630, or whatever the number is. Eventually you have to check out, go home and try to explain to your dear wife why it took 2 hours to run to home depot and buy two things. Once I tried answering "The same reason that it takes you and our oldest daugher three hours to go buy a pair of tennis shoes." I'll never do that again.

After trying to explain to your dear wife why your trip took so long you need a brief rest to recover from your exhaustive Home Depot trip, and to check and see who is being drafted by which team in the NFL draft.

Once your favorite team makes the bonehead decision of the draft and wastes a pick on some total putz that even you can see is never going to cut it in the NFL, it's time to go back outside. Mostly because your dear wife doesn't want you teaching that language to the children. But also because you need to install the new belt and scale eliminator. Put the drain plug in place. Turn on the water to check for leaks. Then you run back around the house, turn off the water. Fix the leaks. Then repeat. Sometimes over and over.

Once the leaks have been reduced to drips you let the cooler fill with water while tightening fittings to turn off the drips.

Once the cooler is full of water you go into the house and turn the control over to pump only. Wander back around the house to the back yard and see where water is spraying out of the cooler in places that it isn't supposed to. Run back into the house, and turn the pump off. Fix the new leaks, or redirect the wter disribution system as needed. Then back into the house to turn the pump back on.

If there are no leaks you can let the pads soak while you oil the pillowblocks and check the tension and alignment on the belt and pulleys.

Once the pads are moist you have to put all the panels back on the cooler then walk back around into the house and turn the controller over to low cool. Stroll back outside and start around the house. Occasionally you have to take a panel or two off the unit to see where they unusual noise is coming from. But I didn't have any of those this year. So once the cooler sounds like it's running okay, you turn the control up to high cool and make sure that everything is working there also. Unfortunatly if that causes problems, you probably have motor trouble and that is going to require another trip to Home Depot.

Finally you have finished your dear wife's simple little request and turned on the cooler. So grab a shower, you need it. Grab a cold drink and settle back down in front of the NFL draft again. But don't get too comfortable. Sooner or later your team is going to get another pick, then you are going to get put back to work because you are telling them that they are just too stupid to know good football talent when they see it.