You are now entering the 21st century...

When we moved to Utah, we bought our first home. It was built for returning WWII veterans... which means my house is older than my parents. It has some unique qualities about it that are interesting. One of which is the fact that it has no air conditioning. I have a beautiful swamp cooler. Or if you want to use the nice term "evaporative cooler."

When we first moved in, the previous renters told us the cooler only had one speed, low. So we dealt with that, and the fact that you can't choose a temperature... only a number. Most evenings we would sit and realize it was getting hot and the converstion would go like this. "Hey, what's the cooler set to?" "Um... I think it's at about 8 1/2." "Can you turn it down?" "Do you mean down like to number 9 or down like to make it colder?" Our favorite was about at 7 1/2 during the day about 8 1/2 when it started to cool down at night. Don't ask me how warm that is... I have no idea.

This morning it was getting hot, and I turned on my cooler. Or at least I tried to. I was playing a new game on our Wii, and it required a bit of movement and I was getting hot. I turned down the cooler... nothing happened. I tried again... still nothing. It was at 5 1/2 and I should have been feeling like I was at the south pole, but nothing!

After withholding a few curse words, I went in and calmly told Will. His response, "I guess I have to get on the roof?" So he did. Nothing was wrong with the cooler as far as he could tell. So we called a guy in our ward that does heating and cooling. He and Will got on the roof, but he couldn't see anything wrong with the cooler itself but our switch in the house was about as old as the house itself. He said if we changed it out it would work.

Here's Will modeling the old switch.

After we switched it out with the help of our neighbor, we flipped on the cooler.... Nothing. UGH! So we called our neighbor again (who's an electrician) since Danny our friend who knows about these things had gone home. Will and Mike (our neighbor) jumped up on the roof again. You think jump is a funny word, but we don't have a ladder. They went and took it all apart again, and surprise... it has fuses. That were all blown. Thankfully Mike just happened to have some lying around. He put in the fuses, and aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh, cool air started coming into the house. It was a relief since by this time it was 85 inside.

Our new switch. So pretty and modern!

So after all the work we'd done, and the 3 times up on the roof (Thanks Will!), and a super hot house, and $40 for a new switch, the fix was some cheap fuses.

However, now I have a beautiful new controller in the house, and I can tell how warm it is. Plus I found out, it can be set as low as 49. That may be pushing it, but it's good to know.

The stone age on the left, and the computer age on the right.

Thankfully we got everything fixed. I'm still waiting for the house to cool down all the way, but that should happen pretty fast, especially since when we changed out the fuses, we found out it has a high speed as well as a low speed. I'm in heaven.