I recently wrote about our problems after our existing gas heater stopped working: The painful stink of obsolescence.

Recap: we have now spent over $15,000 replacing the entire system after a non-replaceable $200 circuit board died (and new models are no longer compatible with our existing ducting).

Because: engineered redundancy.

Well, the new heating & air-cond system is now installed, and we had a handover of how to operate this state-of-art zoned system on Wednesday.

After giving it a couple of hours to run itself in, we began to realise that the house was no warmer. In fact, the vents were blowing air that at best could be described as tepid.

The house temperature would go no higher than 16 Celcius. And worse, as the evening got colder… it just felt like the vents were blowing the freezing outside air on us. We turned it off.

The next day, in a forlorn hope that turning it off and back on might solve the problem, we discovered that now not even the fan was blowing. A long call back to the technician and various adjustments to the control panel did not improve the situation.

He helpfully informed us that as the unit is fully installed, it now comes under the responsibility of the manufacturer’s service team (not the installation company) to sort it out.

We received an email later that day informing us that before the service team could attend we must declare that we had not done anything that might void the warranty. And that the team would contact us in the next 2 business days to confirm a time. It was now Thursday.

I checked to see if excessive vibration from me banging my head against the wall or collateral shrapnel damage resulting from my frozen testicles shattering like ice cubes dropped into a glass of cheap Gin might count. Apparently not.

So. That is the story so far. It is now Saturday morning. Nobody has contacted us. We have a brand new 15,000 art installation on the side of the house and a couple more winter nights before any chance of turning it into something resembling life support.

I have a lot to be grateful for in my life.
But sometimes the way humans have cobbled together the way our world operates just pisses me off.

Photo by Kévin JINER