Name Lips
10-20-2010, 01:23 PM
Normally in the fall we call up a heating/air conditioning company to come out and shut down our swamp cooler, clean out the heaters, and get them up and running. I could do this myself but hey it's a perk of renting that they maintain the property for us.
This year they've dropped their usual company and are working with a handyman instead. As far as I can tell he's just "some guy they know" and doesn't know a damn thing about what he's doing.
But it's not MY house he's working on. I can always move into a different crappy rental house. So I can just sit back and be amused.
The first time I met George the Handyman was when we noticed our roof leaking. The roof has been in dire need of repair since we moved in -- you can see the shingles curling up and falling off. But in New Mexico it only really rains like maybe 5 times a year, so it took these last 5 years before it started leaking.
So we call up the property manager and out comes George. He slaps down some tar (which he calls "black stuff." I'm not sure if he doesn't know it's called "tar" or if he thinks I don't, but he avoided the word.) and says it should be fixed. It hasn't rained since then so I really have no clue if it did anything.
But now he's here to hook up our heaters...
"Not sure why because they should be on, just turn on the thermostat."
(so he doesn't know that the gas is actually turned off to the heaters in the summer? Also, we have 2 heaters, and the one in the back doesn't connect to a thermostat. You just turn it on and off.)
"And throw a tarp over the cooler..."
(He's not planning on draining it, cleaning it, and draining the tubes? Guess he's coming back in the spring to fix the freeze damage... And isn't he going to unplug the fan and pump, so we can't switch it on?)
He then proceeded to take off the tiny access panel of the back heater and fumble around with his lighter for a while before I told him that you need to remove the entire bottom panel to get to the pilot light. Then his lighter went out and he had to borrow mine.
He declared the entire heater was old and needed to be replaced, but I don't think he ever figured out how to light the pilot. "Normally you just push the button and it clicks a few times and lights itself..."
The front heater actually hooks up to a thermostat in the living room, and after he mentioned the "it should work already" thing a few times I told him I didn't want it hooked up in the summer because my kids might accidentally turn up the thermostat. He said "oh I guess that makes sense."
He observed once that he's "very safety conscious because I know what it's like to have a bad heater burn my house down." Well how's THAT for a self-recommendation.
Anyway he just showed up with his buddy Chris and a wall heater that didn't fit in the opening we have. It was a two-sided heater that requires a thermostat, and our back heater is one-sided and doesn't have a thermostat. He was going to install it anyway and just "shut one side down" (so it wouldn't overheat the back bedroom) but then he realized that would require lots of cutting open the wall.
Actually his first plan was to replace the front heater and move the front heater to the back, which wouldn't work for similar reasons (it wouldn't fit, and requires a thermostat to turn on.) Then the double-sided one would be spending 50% of its power blowing hot air directly into the kitchen...
So he just left to get a heater that actually fits. I'm not sure when I expect him back, but it took him 2 days to find the last one.
I bet if I asked him to fix the draft around the front and back doors he'd show up with brand new doors.... that don't fit.
This year they've dropped their usual company and are working with a handyman instead. As far as I can tell he's just "some guy they know" and doesn't know a damn thing about what he's doing.
But it's not MY house he's working on. I can always move into a different crappy rental house. So I can just sit back and be amused.
The first time I met George the Handyman was when we noticed our roof leaking. The roof has been in dire need of repair since we moved in -- you can see the shingles curling up and falling off. But in New Mexico it only really rains like maybe 5 times a year, so it took these last 5 years before it started leaking.
So we call up the property manager and out comes George. He slaps down some tar (which he calls "black stuff." I'm not sure if he doesn't know it's called "tar" or if he thinks I don't, but he avoided the word.) and says it should be fixed. It hasn't rained since then so I really have no clue if it did anything.
But now he's here to hook up our heaters...
"Not sure why because they should be on, just turn on the thermostat."
(so he doesn't know that the gas is actually turned off to the heaters in the summer? Also, we have 2 heaters, and the one in the back doesn't connect to a thermostat. You just turn it on and off.)
"And throw a tarp over the cooler..."
(He's not planning on draining it, cleaning it, and draining the tubes? Guess he's coming back in the spring to fix the freeze damage... And isn't he going to unplug the fan and pump, so we can't switch it on?)
He then proceeded to take off the tiny access panel of the back heater and fumble around with his lighter for a while before I told him that you need to remove the entire bottom panel to get to the pilot light. Then his lighter went out and he had to borrow mine.
He declared the entire heater was old and needed to be replaced, but I don't think he ever figured out how to light the pilot. "Normally you just push the button and it clicks a few times and lights itself..."
The front heater actually hooks up to a thermostat in the living room, and after he mentioned the "it should work already" thing a few times I told him I didn't want it hooked up in the summer because my kids might accidentally turn up the thermostat. He said "oh I guess that makes sense."
He observed once that he's "very safety conscious because I know what it's like to have a bad heater burn my house down." Well how's THAT for a self-recommendation.
Anyway he just showed up with his buddy Chris and a wall heater that didn't fit in the opening we have. It was a two-sided heater that requires a thermostat, and our back heater is one-sided and doesn't have a thermostat. He was going to install it anyway and just "shut one side down" (so it wouldn't overheat the back bedroom) but then he realized that would require lots of cutting open the wall.
Actually his first plan was to replace the front heater and move the front heater to the back, which wouldn't work for similar reasons (it wouldn't fit, and requires a thermostat to turn on.) Then the double-sided one would be spending 50% of its power blowing hot air directly into the kitchen...
So he just left to get a heater that actually fits. I'm not sure when I expect him back, but it took him 2 days to find the last one.
I bet if I asked him to fix the draft around the front and back doors he'd show up with brand new doors.... that don't fit.