Aliens in the Apple

The Saga of the Air Conditioning

Franci 8 Jul 2010 Apartment living

I was going to do a post with pictures about our new place, but alas, I haven’t gotten around to taking pictures, so I’ll try to do that in the next day or two.

So we moved into our new place last Thursday, and let me tell you, it has been a full week. Full of cleaning, full of heat, full of trips and events, full of sorting out and unpacking, full of ‘issues’. Issues like the little annoying things like the gas company not wanting to turn on the gas without seeing in person Ben’s social security card, probably because it’s new. So Ben had to take a special trip into the city before work. But all’s good — we have gas.

Or take for instance the day the guy came to connect the internet. He had to do something with the cable outside and managed to lock himself out not once, not twice, but three times. So I’d be in the bedroom trying to feed Esther and I just hear this desperate banging and “Hello? Mees?!” So I open the door and it just repeats itself. Until my brains cleared enough to unlock it from the inside.

The day after we moved in we had an air-conditioning unit installed. Here in NYC, they just pop them in a window, and in the winter you can take them out. So they turn up and have a look and um-ed and ah-ed and asked whether we had permission from the landlord to do this? Yes, I assured them but rang Ben just in case. Yes, we had the OK from him. The air-con guys then said they’d have to cut the bars in front of the window (ground floor windows and most 1st storey windows here have bars), and because we had permission, I assumed this would be ok. You can see where this is leading, right…? They cut the first bar, which almost ruined their grinder, so they cut the other 3 by hand. It took them long enough for me to go and do my groceries and come back and for them still not to be finished cutting the bars. In any case, they installed the thing, I paid them and they left.

By this stage, the racket they had caused made the neighbours call the landlord, who then called Ben at work: “You had them cut the bars??!!” Anyway, to cut a long story short, we had a highly unimpressed landlord and we were to stupid to have known any better. So now we know. You don’t cut the bars. You put the air-con inside the bars. The landlord had his “iron guy” come look at the damage and he welded on a box that will cost us between $300 and $400.

An expensive lesson in How-to in New York. :-)

Comments (1)

Hannah 8 Jul 2010 at 9:51pm

Who knew? Guess you’ve been glad for the AC this week though! The national news has been reporting on the high temperatures in the NE, and we’ve experiencing similar weather in the SE. Supposed to rain and cool off tomorrow.