AIR COOLER WITH HEATER

...or the original solvent. Yes that's right folks, warm water with a little bit of elbow, or in this case knuckle, grease will do wonders for the health of your air conditioning window unit's health. Confused? Well, let me step back, just a bit to explain.

Since the dog days of Summer seem to be jumping unexpectedly out of some hidden lair to bite us in the ass, the Mrs. and I (I like saying "the Mrs.") decided to break down and install AC window units for the sake of a bit of sleep comfort and to prevent the poor pooch from having brain bake while we humans go out into the world to earn dog food buying magic green paper things.

So, after a bit of medium and heavy lifting we find our hero, (that'd be me) inspecting the filters on each of the appliances in question, only to find a moderate amount of dust from the season before. "No problem, in just a jif or 2 we'll have cool dry air pumping into our environs," I thought to myself. But then, on closer inspection, what should I see on the coils beyond the filter housings? Filth I tell you, pure filth.
(have a look at the previous photo in my stream for an example)

The unit in the living room window was acquired 2nd hand from a work acquaintance who'd installed whole house air conditioning (must be nice) and gave us this pretty decent unit for a more than fair deal, or so I thought. Last year, we noticed a slight oder when running it, but time and a general appreciation for not sweating while sitting still to watch a movie or such did not allow us to investigate.

This year I investigate to find a crusty amalgam of nicotine, dust, and cat hair crusted onto the entire evaporator coil. Filth, pure filth. A number of fins were also bent so that all in all, one might wonder how any air could make it through to be cooled.

Well, after some diligent toothbrush and water work mixed with lots of patience I managed to remove most of the filth and bend the heat sync fins back to a more normal position. Much better. The smaller unit in the sleeping quarters was filthy too, but just dust and no crust so a quick vac treatment with the gentle brush attachment was all the Dr. ordered.

Moral of the story. Inspect and clean your coils on a regular basis. Otherwise you will be asking too much of your air conditioner and paying too much to you electric company, not to mention increasing your carbon footprint to Shaq size for no reason at all.

Strobist: SB-800 hidden guess where, and triggered by the cameras built-in flash using Nikon's i-TTL exposure control, which really rocks.

Alice Cooper - Cold Ethyl
One thing I miss
Is cold Ethyl and her skeleton kiss.
We met last night
Making love by the refrigerator light.
Ethyl, Ethyl,
Let me squeeze you in my arms.
Ethyl, Ethyl,
Come and freeze me with your charms.
One thing, no lie -
Ethyl's frigid as an Eskimo pie.
She's cool in bed,
She's gotta be 'cuz Ethyl's dead.
(Repeat 2nd verse)
Come on, cold Ethyl, freeze me baby.
One thing - it's true,
Cold Ethyl I am stuck on you,
And everything is my way,
Ethyl don't have much to say.
(Repeat 2nd verse)
Come here, cold Ethyl
What makes you so cold ?...OO..So cold
Cold Ethyl, cold, cold Ethyl
If I live 'til 97,
You'll still be waiting
In refrigerator heaven,
Cuz you're cool, you're ice.
Cold Ethyl - you're my paradise.

Yeah, so this took FOREVER!! Do you know how hard it is to find stock for a morgue? Geez! lol So I had to think of another idea for a picture today because I'm behind and wanted to do something Alice Cooper related. My mom and dad said I should do "Cold Ethyl". I thought it would be fun to do. But holy crap it took way too long and isn't nearly as cool as I was hoping it would be. The hardest part was finding a metal table that would work. I had to play iwth the perspective alot to get it to look kind of normal. The funnest part was the brain :) lolOh well it's done and I'm not terribly dissapointed.

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