How Important is Air Conditioning?

There are many things in life that we modern folk simply take for granted day in and day out. One of those is air conditioning but how important is it in our lives and what would we do without it?

Hey, the grumpy old guy Edwyn has returned to writing something in this old blog I started a few years back! Don’t get all nostalgic because this may or may not turn into a long-winded grumble about something else I found around the house that got me all riled up.

OK, so what was it that got me onto this subject and mores the point, writing it down in here to spread a little of that nit picky old guy love around? Well, I’m as guilty as the next guy of taking the AC for granted until on the hottest day of summer, lo and behold the thing decides to stop working!

Call the HVAC Engineer

One thing I’m not is a serial grumbler who sits in an easy chair idly venting my anger at the world. When something needs my attention, it gets it. I saw an immediate problem and called the experts right away.

That’s because as the indoor temperature started to rise a little unnervingly fast, I could easily foresee some discomfort on the horizon that I did not feel like experiencing. I had the number of a local air conditioning engineer I’d gotten from my neighbor last month when he had some trouble with his system and the guys he called out were amazing (see: https://www.atlanticheatandair.com).

I called, they came inside an hour and inside another hour I was feeling the beautiful chill breeze blowing over me already. That was good work, fast and efficient. I like that!

Why We Need AC

That brings me full circle back to the question I posed at the start of this blog post. Why do we need this energy-hogging expensive to run convenience called air conditioning?

Well, it depends where you live, I guess. I live in a place that gets mild winters but hot summers. The heat gets to you and the older you get, the more acutely you feel it when it gets real uncomfortably hot.

Sure, there are alternative ways to cool down. I can go take a swim in the pool for one, but that is only temporary, cause as soon as I get out, I get hot again!

You can buy one or two of those great ventless air coolers that are really evaporative coolers and not AC and they use a fraction of the amount of energy but still blast out cold air. They work great as long as the climate is hot and dry. If it gets humid, they won’t work as well.

Or you can get your home shaded with blinds and awnings, paint the exterior walls white and make sure you have great insulation so you can open windows in the evening to let in cooler breezes to cool the house down then close everything up in the daytime and prevent it getting too hot.

There are sure to be other ways to stay cooler than doing nothing, but at the end of the day, the most effective sure-fire way to make sure the indoor climate stays really comfortable in summer is with an air conditioner system on one description or another. You just need to be able to afford to pay the utility bills!

Edwyn Prose

The Speeding Ticket that Never Was

Gotta love the system (at least some of the time). This is something that happened to a friend of mine recently and after he told me I got to thinking, this could blow the lid off a whole load of wrongdoings if it ever got made public knowledge. Not that I’m gonna do that!

Anyhow, its about a guy driving his car to visit some friends and a brush with some friendly police officers along the way. Well, my friend, who of course shall remain nameless in this story as he doesn’t want any reprisals, was driving along pretty slow that day. He even knew it was real slow, much slower than the residential speed limit as he was in no big hurry. It was a beautiful day and he was just enjoying the ride. Well, he almost had a coronary when a cop stood out in the street up in front and motioned him to pull over.

Seems that, according to the cop, he had been driving in excess of the speed limit, which was 25mph. Well, he was adamant that not only was he within the speed limit, he was, if anything driving way too slow at around 15-20mph. He explained this to the cop, but nothing doing and he got a ticket.

Well, he said that if he been truly going faster than the speed limit and was caught, he would simply have paid up and put it behind him.

But this time, he knew he was right and decided to contest the ticket in court. Now, things will have to get a little fuzzy here, cause the result went in his favor and he got off. His lawyer knew a thing or two about how speed traps work and how they should work. It seems that a certain item of equipment, shall we say, could not be certified as being reliable because certain, um paperwork could not be produced to verify its accurate calibration on the day in question. Okay, that’s all I’m saying and that’s probably too much!

It just goes to show that justice can be seen to be done for the little guy every so often and this is one of those times!

What this is leading up to, if you were wondering, is something that might be useful to some folks who have a tendency to allow their speed to creep up a little without noticing and find themselves unwittingly above the speed limit just at the time a police speed trap is lying in wait. Now, I do not condone speeding, but I do understand that most honest folks can slip a little once or twice without meaning to and its usually they who get stopped, while habitual speed merchants have an uncanny knack of slowing down just before the radar device hits their car. How do they do that?

Well, I hear that they are cheating by using a radar or GPS device that alerts them to an impending speed trap. Now that is pretty unfair you might say and against the law. But I found out that these devices are actually legal! Can you beat that?

It makes me pretty mad to know that some laws can be gotten around by using them against themselves, unlike that in my friend’s case where a faulty radar device could cost a lot of drivers a lot of tickets and they don’t know any better to contest them. But I guess life was never meant to be all that fair!

Back in the Pink

Hey there, a small blip in the health department had me out of action just lately, but I’m back in the pink now and raring to go! I posted awhile back after the Christmas period that I wanted to lose some weight after putting on a few pounds over that festive season of goodwill to all men and good eating to regret later! Well, I soon lost it again so that wasn’t a problem for me.

I’ll tell you what is.

I had a short stay in hospital and my only real gripe was there was a TV in the room and for the life of me I couldn’t turn the blasted thing off! That was torture to yours truly who as you may or may not know cannot bear to be anywhere near a TV set. I hate TV with a vengeance!

There must be some kinda brainwashing policy going on in those institutions where they got a captive audience who are confined to their bed for awhile. All they can do is lay there staring at the moron-making box spewing out garbage shows that turn your brain to mush and more ads than you can deal with.

I came out of there a nervous wreck wanting to shop at Wal-Mart and badly needing a new Ford! What do folks who watch that trash all the time do? They must be totally whacked on that media drug that’s breeding a whole country of TV-fed ad-overloaded idiots is all I can say.

I bet your glad you heard I posted in this grumpy old guy blog, ain’t ya!

There’s nothing like a good rant about what’s wrong with this once great country. I bet Lincoln is turning in his grave at the way we have become slaves to the TV set. We don’t need an army to protect us from invaders, because we are being eaten away from the inside by the TV cancer that no one even believes is doing any harm.

Well, maybe by the time the day comes when we roll over and ask for our tummies to be rubbed as our enemies just stroll in and plant their flag at Capitol Hill, I’ll be dead and buried and turning in my grave as well.

End of anti-TV ran for today!

Edwyn Prose

Do I Need to Lose Weight

I caught my reflection in a store window I was walking past the other day and realized that this old frame of mine appeared to be a little larger than the last time I looked. Nothing untoward, and I won’t be reaching for the books on obesity in my local library for sure, but it was enough ti get me onto a set of scales to weigh myself and see.

Well, appearances can be deceptive, as they say, but this time the appearance of my reflection was showing me what the scales confirmed. I was four pounds heavier than I like to be and that, for me is a real problem. To most folks, it would be no more than a shrug and a “who cares” attitude, but to me it means I need to get rid of those extra pounds and I’m teh kind of guy who will not rest until its done!

I already get plenty of exercise, or so I thought, by walking my dogs and going for a daily swim, but what had happened was the dreaded festive season got in the way and with family togetherness being the order of those fun filled days, some of that exercise got missed. Combine that with the extra food that you just can’t avoid at this time of the year unless you want to go live on top of a remote mountain someplace, and that adds up to a little weight gain, even for pretty fit and healthy guys like me (despite my age, I hasten to add).

What will I be doing to get rid of the excess?

Ha! No fancy diets for me. I already got back in my daily exercise routine and I’m eating my regular diet which is pretty healthy anyway. I reckon in a couple weeks, I’ll be back to level weight again and will have forgotten all about this little blip on the otherwise unblemished health scale of one Edwyn Prose!

Ha! If everyone thought like me, the weight loss industry would go out of business overnight! Lucky for them most folks don’t. See ya again when I’m lighter!

Edwyn Prose

Handicap Bathroom Design

Handicap bathroom design is something I have had a hand in lately with my nephew’s place getting some cosmetic work done and that included his specially adapted bathroom. Now, I know folks are often curious to know what designing a bathroom for a person with disabilities entails and for that matter what goes into one, so I’ll write a little on that and hopefully give you a better understanding of what it entails.

OK, the first thing you have to bear in mind when putting together a working design for a handicap-friendly bathroom remodeling project is the layout and that means you need to leave plenty of space for a wheelchair user to get around in there. They have to able to get in, turn around and get out as well as use the facilities without unduly needing to lean over stuff or stretch to reach anything.

If that makes sense, then the rest of this should all fall into place.

You need to start with things that cannot easily be moved, such as waste water pipes, hot and cold water inlets, electrical sockets etc. Those are things that are best worked with where they are if you can. So if you have a drainage point for a shower and a toilet that are far enough away from each other to allow a full sized handicap shower stall to be installed, that’s great. if not, you really cannot compromise on that one, as its no good installing a shower unit that a wheelchair user can’t use!

Same goes for the handicap toilet. It has to be in a place that is easy to get to and to transfer to and from a wheelchair using handrails fitted securely to the walls. So if it means having to move something major, like a water waste pipe, then you’ll probably find it easier to move the outlet for the shower than the toilet, which is a job you really do not want to undertake unless it is absolutely necessary!

Think about where you’ll install the wash basin or vanity unit too, as it’ll require water inlets and outlets too, although these are not too difficult to move if needs be.

When installing faucets, they had better be specially adapted ones so that a person with very little strength in their hands can still easily operate them. No point fitting a beautiful looking chrome mixing faucet that you can’t turn on or off.

Floor space is important of course, as a wheelchair needs to be able to get around in there and the handicap shower stall needs to be large enough to accommodate a wheelchair and handicap shower seat too. Hand rails need to be anywhere a person is likely to need to move around, for instance getting out of a wheelchair and sitting in a shower seat. Think about the best placement and for heaven’s sake if the handicapped person who is gonna use the facility is there, ask them where they want them!

Ensuring all the furniture is at the correct height is important as well, because a person in a wheelchair who wants to wash their hands will want to do so while sitting, for obvious reasons! Make sure they can get the chair under the wash basin so they don’t have to reach too far over to use the faucets.

Well, that’s about most of the main points about getting handicap bathroom design as right as you can. Smaller things like towel rails and stuff should all follow the same common sense placement as the furniture for height and distance and as long as you also fit a non-slip floor surface, you’ll have a pretty satisfied user.

That’s it for this post, so I’ll be back again soon.

Edwyn Prose