New Yea Cee Having

Air conditioning (Photo credit: niallkennedy)

We are fortunate in having a very good landlord. So good, in fact, when I suggested our AC units were - at some 20 years old - a maintenance (and environmental) nightmare for all concerned and could well bear replacing his response was to have them replaced.

This is a good thing, I would submit.

However, replacing ACs has, as so many things in life, consequences. The first of these is the necessity for a crane to visit and heft all the new compressor units up onto the roof and bring the old units down. They're quite big, one of the units is a 6-tonne, two more are 4-tonnes. And then we have a namby pamby 2-tonne as well. But the roof thing has meant no AC in the house until the new units are installed. The first of these came online yesterday.

The second consequence is every false ceiling behind which a fan unit lurks has had to be taken down - as have the old (and quite large) fan units. New holes have to be drilled in the concrete to take the threaded bars from which to hang the new units. This whole process is dirty (20 year-old watery residues abound), dusty and noisy and involves several workmen. The contractors have been scrupulously polite, as clean as humanly possible and generally the antithesis of the usual bunch of venial bashi-bozouks. But the week has still dragged with constant disruption, noise and mess all over the place.

But tomorrow will bring a new era - new yea cees!