Monday, May 14, 2012
Unnecessarily oblique
Spokane isn't highly air-conditioned. In this neighborhood, maybe 1/8 of all houses have window units, and 1/20 have central.
Only a few have window units mounted through the wall. This was a fairly common technique in the '50s, when air conditioners (like all other appliances!) were built to be repaired. You could leave the casing in the wall and pull out the innards to fix the fan or recharge the Freon. It's impractical with more recent ACs, which are (like all other appliances!) unrepairable and unrechargeable thanks to the replacement of nontoxic CFC by poisonous HFC. Now you'd have to take out the whole casing and replace it with a new unit that may not fit the same opening.
In Kansas and Okla the wall-mounted units were always placed up high, around eye level. This makes sense: cold air drops, so a high AC has a better chance of 'throwing the cool' across the room. Also has a better chance of blowing over chairs and tables.
Here in Spokane, the few wall-mounts I've seen are down low, around knee level. I don't know why you'd do it that way.
One of these down-low units makes even less sense.
The hole is much larger than the cooler, and is about 3 degrees off perpendicular. It's not sloppy. The metal siding was carefully cut in a perfect (but slanted) rectangle; the plywood is perfectly aligned with the slanted opening, and the cooler is perfectly square with the plywood.
I can't figure out how this happened. If you accidentally make one off-perp cut in a wall, you correct it before making any other cuts. You don't carefully measure the other three sides to match the first one. That would be harder than cutting straight!
Some things will be forever mysterious! ¶ 5:02 AM
Only a few have window units mounted through the wall. This was a fairly common technique in the '50s, when air conditioners (like all other appliances!) were built to be repaired. You could leave the casing in the wall and pull out the innards to fix the fan or recharge the Freon. It's impractical with more recent ACs, which are (like all other appliances!) unrepairable and unrechargeable thanks to the replacement of nontoxic CFC by poisonous HFC. Now you'd have to take out the whole casing and replace it with a new unit that may not fit the same opening.
In Kansas and Okla the wall-mounted units were always placed up high, around eye level. This makes sense: cold air drops, so a high AC has a better chance of 'throwing the cool' across the room. Also has a better chance of blowing over chairs and tables.
Here in Spokane, the few wall-mounts I've seen are down low, around knee level. I don't know why you'd do it that way.
One of these down-low units makes even less sense.
The hole is much larger than the cooler, and is about 3 degrees off perpendicular. It's not sloppy. The metal siding was carefully cut in a perfect (but slanted) rectangle; the plywood is perfectly aligned with the slanted opening, and the cooler is perfectly square with the plywood.
I can't figure out how this happened. If you accidentally make one off-perp cut in a wall, you correct it before making any other cuts. You don't carefully measure the other three sides to match the first one. That would be harder than cutting straight!
Some things will be forever mysterious! ¶ 5:02 AM
