Day 29: Duct Mystery Solved
The weather was beautiful in Philadelphia this weekend. I seriously considered that Philadelphia might be trying to woo me back after a delightful week in San Francisco (remember that when I left, it was SNOWING). In any case, one drawback of the warm, sunny weather is that the upstairs of our house—where I work and we're all sleeping during the remodel—got unbearably hot. It's normally hotter than the rest of the house, especially in the middle of summer, but it seemed decidedly odd that it should be quite this hot when it was only 80 degrees outside.
After one uncomfortable night—and after observing that the downstairs was downright cold—Al went around closing all the downstairs vents and making sure that the upstairs ones were open. The second night, it became obvious that *no air* was coming out of the upstairs vents at all. We set up two fans and suffered through, but it was pretty awful—especially when the Beaner got into bed with us in the wee hours of the morning. (Yes, we are total 21st-century, first-world wimps. We like our heat in the winter and A/C in the summer.)
Jack had e-mailed a progress invoice for the tile work on Saturday, so on Sunday I responded that I'd have a check ready for him on Monday, and on a related note, was it possible that in the process of snaking the cable through the ductwork that we might have broken something? Jack said he'd check with Ken, and then look into it himself when he came on Monday to get the check.
That brings us to Day 29. Jack came and checked the ductwork, which looked sound, and also removed the register through which we'd snaked the cable to see if he could spot any trouble there. Nothing. He went downstairs, came back up, looked again, and said, "it's working now." It turned out that it was a dirty furnace filter. Definitely a forehead-smacking situation; I'd thought about checking the filter, of course—and the thermostat I'd been experimenting with said right on it "change filter monthly for best perfomance", as if to reinforce the idea—but I'd dismissed the thought because I'd changed the filter only three weeks ago. What I hadn't taken into consideration is that it would become clogged faster during the remodel because of all the construction dust. Normally I use my allergies as a guide for when to change it; if I start sneezing while doing the laundry, it's time. (Our dryer is not vented to the outside, and it's in the same room as the heat pump—or whatever the HVAC unit is called—so the filter usually gets clogged with lint after about 4-5 weeks.) In this case my allergies were not a good guide, because [a] it's allergy season outside, and [b] I'm behind on the laundry. That is, I've been sneezing, but not in the laundry room.
Not that it matters, but in case you're curious, we use Ultra-Allergen filters from 3M. They're expensive, but they do seem to trap all the crap that would otherwise be circulating through the house (and to which I *am* allergic). I do wonder, however, whether the cost and trouble of getting the dryer vented to the outside would be offset by being able to buy slightly cheaper filters (i.e., maybe the red ones instead of the purple). Hm... maybe I should get Jack to give me a cost estimate?