Sunday night personal

Went to eat over at E.'s place of business and when I got back home, the A/C was frozen up again. Did a Google search - "my air conditioner keeps icing up" - and immediately came up with this:

1st I'm not an A/C guy, but I play one on t.v.... Check the coils on the unit that's outside to see if they're dirty or clogged... You should be able to see light from the other side when you look through them. Somebody else suggested the filter... that's a likely cause too!

(I'd already changed the filter today.) I remembered the last time an A/C guy was here - to unclog the drain pan inside - saying something about the outside unit possibly getting clogged up (he suggested with cat hair, perhaps having seen a cat in my apartment) and ultimately needing attention.

It was dark already, so I went out on the terrace, where the outside unit sits up against a wall, and shined a flashlight through the slits. No light coming through on the other side, at all. At first I panicked. But then I remembered I had a pressure sprayer that I used to use for ... what, I don't remember. After I'd jammed the blow dryer into the inside unit and started de-icing it, I filled the sprayer with hot water (a few times) and sprayed through the slits and down inside the back of the unit (where I couldn't spray through the slits). The water was seeping out a dark brown (and going downstairs - a no-no, but this was an emergency). I worked on it a good 45 minutes, at least, going over and over the coils with the sprayer. (Even when the flashlight was at last shining through, I kept going over them.)

I didn't see any hair on the coils, by the way. What was covering them appeared to be just particulate material. (Earlier this year, they resurfaced the patio - one floor below - and sent up a lot of dust as they were blasting away the old surface. This went on for days, if not weeks.) Hopefully, what I did tonight will help alleviate the icing-up of the inside unit and avoid or at least delay having a repairman come in (which entails taking time off from work) - or having to replace the inside unit, which aside from being old and maybe on its last legs, could become damaged by getting frozen up.

I just replaced the outside unit a few years ago, and replacing the inside unit would be even costlier. But it's going to happen one of these days. The thing looks really dirty and decrepit, but as long as it still works...

The issue here, by the way, is that if the air flow from the outside unit across the inside coils isn't sufficient, the coils will freeze up.

By the way, tonight at the restaurant, one of E.'s loyal customers who came in turned out to be the granddaughter of one of my dad's former bosses. We had a long chat.