I, Hive

One of the joys, did I say joys?

One of the irritants of owning a fake house in Florida is that the maintenance costs are far from fake. OK. It’s called a manufactured house, but I know what they mean. It showed up on an Amazon Prime flatbed one day and was deposited on a sand patch by a river. The Sears catalog of yesterday is Amazon Prime of today. There’s your house, now be happy.

When I moved in, I knew there were ‘issues’ that had to be ‘resolved.’ One of them was that I was moving to a flood zone on hurricane side street, not quite hurricane alley, and my house was situated right next to a river. Before I bought the place I talked to my neighbors. “How did you fare during Irma?” I asked, nonchalantly. My next-door neighbor’s wife was named Irma so that needed some explaining. And running.

Irma, the storm, had pretty much hit directly on where we are here, so if they fared OK then I had nothing to fear from all future disturbances of the tropical nature. I got various answers from, “The river overflowed its banks but didn’t get as far as your garage, let alone your house,” to, “There was four feet of water in your garage, man. Run for your life!” That last one came from a neighbor that had also told me a fella next to him “Had, like, a hundred cats!” OK. Prone to exaggerate much?

I bought the place anyway. The inspector told me there was no evidence of flooding in the house or under it, so that sounded official and definitive. I got on with the business of procuring a dwelling place, scoping out what improvements and fixes were required, and that was that.

One of the first things I did was run over my gate. I hadn’t intended to. I was backing out of my driveway and using the mirrors to navigate, not always the best of references, and I lost my position. Instead of doing anything intelligent like coming to a complete stop and assessing my situational awareness, I kept creeping backward on the cognizance of my own local positioning system, wondering where had all the concrete gone. And then I hit one of the fence posts alongside said concrete. I had only been going a couple of miles an hour, but a couple of miles per hour times a couple of tons of car equals a lot of momentum for a six-foot pole. It snapped off at the ground line and fell over. Oops.

Ya, OK. Whatever. The previous owner, a Mister Robert White (seriously? Bob White?) had been a bit of a paranoia freak. The fence around the property was topped with a string and a helix of barbed wire running like a constant Morse code warning and threat of swift retaliation if challenged. And maybe tetanus, too. The doors, inside, out, and garage, had several dead bolts attached and the house had a primitive security system running throughout it like a paranoid police pulmonary system. There was an odd, four-foot square footprint on the sidewalk next to the driveway. I came to calling it the guard shack. I assumed sergeant Schultz used to live there, knowing nothing, as per code. Maybe I should get a monocle? Old Bob White apparently breathed security. Paranoia was his oxygen, I gathered. Diligence his driver and barbed wire his sword of righteousness. I tried not to judge. Maybe the alligators were out to get him. And the government. It figures though his defense tactics were nothing but auto-opiates. And he hadn’t had the Internet.

So I added an addled gate post to my list of repairs.

This year I decided to do some deep cleaning and tissue massage on the perimeter. Florida’s atmosphere is best applied to the growing of mold, mildew, and insects. The gutter on the back of my house had pulled out of its bracket at one end and was constantly dripping water on the deck and ramp along side my house, keeping it forever basted. It was the north side and under the shade of a couple of live oaks, so it was pretty much guaranteed to be an urban Petrie dish. The walkway was black, slick, and litigious. I had to do something about it.

I turned my impressive procrastination skills upon the task a couple of weeks ago. I got up on a ladder and identified the problem with the gutter-it had pulled out of a screw and was sagging under the weight of gathering leaves, pine needles, and sludge, thereby channeling a constant trickle and stream of water all over my deck and ramp. The previous owner, Rena, Bob had passed away several years earlier, had used a walker and needed a non-step access to the house. It was now more like a slip-and-slide than a safe entryway.

OK. I engineered an acceptable fix to the drainage problem involving a makeshift jack to hold the gutter in place while I worked on it and several stainless steel screws to secure it. There was a couple of inches of water in the gutter which sloshed back and forth as I jockeyed it back in place. Inclined planes are like that.

As is the case with all of my projects, it required several jaunts to the local Home Depot to get unexpected parts, unanticipated tools, or to replace parts that I set aside right here-so I won’t lose them, and never found again. Green grass covers a multitude of small parts. On one of these trips a salesperson by the entrance way asked me if I needed a new something-or-other, unintelligible sounding words. It probably escaped him that I was a man on a mission, wearing mud soaked knee pads, torn jeans, dismal Disney tee-shirt, a bandana gripping my temple, and a look of desperation at having to come back here again for one stinkin’ ten cent item…

“What? Air conditioning? No. I have an HVAC system, thank you,” I remarked, homing in on the fastener isle. I just wanted to get my number 8 stainless steel thingamajig-hoozey. “Ah, but has it been serviced lately?” A challenge. I can never pass up a challenge! “We have a nine-dollar special today on maintenance and recharging…”

I stopped. The sales droid had a point. In the two years I had been there I had never done anything about the heating and cooling system. I hadn’t done anything about the broken gate or the security systems, either, but those shouldn’t be included in the set of, ‘All Things I Will Get To, Eventually. Stop Bothering Me!’ category.

“What are you selling?” I asked, rube that I am.

Salivating to the task, the droid continued, “We are offering a maintenance visit, one time only, no obligation, overhaul, inspection, recharging, revitalizing, reinvigorating, the amazing, the outstanding, praised by kings and princes, installed in the Taj Mahal and performed on the Forbidden Air Conditioning in the royal palace of Beijing, Doctor HVAC’s mystery freon elixir treatment for your tired, your limp (Hey!) air handling system. Regularly priced at one hundred and fifty dollars, today only, just for the low-low price of nine greenbacks, rupees, yuan, or rubles. Slap down a niner and you’ll be finer. You can’t miss. What do you say?”

He had a point. OK. Sign me up.

I got home and found that I had gotten the wrong number 8 stainless steel thingamajig-hoozey (there’s more than one now?) but made it work, anyway. An hour later a friendly HVAC tech came by to service my house’s lungs. They work fast. Or are desperate for work.

I then, maybe for the first time in two years, took a good look at my air handler, heat pump on the back of my house. It looked terrible. It was rusting, patinaed, stained, tired looking, and quite possibly unhealthy. It needed a good overhaul. It was good that I had let that con artist send in the tech cavalry. Let them recharge the old girl with a fresh frieze of freon and be on their way. I expected a quick pickup, a top off, a ‘Here’s your receipt gov’na. Bob’s your uncle,’ and a bracing return to normal. Hail, Victoria. The tech guy spent maybe 20 minutes looking at it and came back with the bad news.

“How old is this unit?” “I don’t know. The house was installed in 1998 and I’m sure it is original. 23 years maybe?” “The evaporator is leaking and can’t hold a charge. The inside has mold growing in it. I have some pictures. The air handling exchanger is making a lot of noise, probably bearings shot, and the whole bit needs replacing…” “How much?”

The repair costs were in the several thousands and there would be no guarantee that something else wouldn’t go bonkers next. He couldn’t just recharge the freon and say, “Tip o’ the hat. Have a nice day.” I wasn’t surprised.

He had several good points. Several good, and expensive, points. “How much would it cost to replace it?” I asked, being the lamb led to banker that I was. He couldn’t say, but he could get a person in to give me an estimate.

Sure, why not? I was used to bait and switch, shady contractors. But I could always just listen to a pitch, agree that they had a valid point, and ask for another opinion from another, equally shady contractor with equally valid points. I had learned the hard (read: Expensive) way not to trust fly by night contractors that wanted to be paid in cash and never gave written estimates or signed contracts. Thanks, “Dutch.”

Mr. Professional HVAC Estimator came by later that afternoon (are they just waiting out of sight of my front door?) He asked some question, most of which I could only surmise the answer to. How old is the unit? Twenty plus years. What is the condition of the ducting? Pretty good as far as I could tell. I had to crawl around under my house to install a water line to the refrigerator from my RO water filter, and as far as I could tell there was no rodent damage and the plastic duct work looked in good shape. I change the filter every three months and it looks as dirty as I would expect from three month’s breathing. He agreed. All of the vents were working, none appeared blocked or inhibited. No mouse poop.

Now the bad news. The unit is shot. He was surprised it still worked. They are only expected to last ten years and this one was multigenarian in dog years. If they tried to repair this unit there would be no extended guarantee. OK. How much to replace it? Flip, flip. Let me see. Do you need a three and a half ton or a four ton unit? he mused. What is your square footage? I’ll check with Pasco County’s land records to get an exact amount. How cold do you like to be? If a thermostat goes down in the forest and no one is there, does anybody shiver?

This guy was professional for a con artist. He checked back with his boss a couple of times. You know. Talk to the man behind the curtain? And got the exact size of my house, 1400 sqft. Three and a half tons of conditioned air is fine, he was assured. And so was I. I made sure he was quoting me a heat pump, not just an air conditioner. Just to be sure.

“I know that’s what they install in the south,” I said. “But I want to make sure that you are made sure of what we are made sure of what I expect to be sure from you. Just in case.” “Yes. Good point,” he said. “We also install just air conditioners if that’s what is required. But I will make sure of-Stop that! I will… insure it is put expressly in the contract before we have you sign.

Contract? Signatures? Double checking with Town Hall? Building permits, even? Take that, Dutch.

“OK. How much?”

“No internal work? No rewiring from the circuit breaker box? No taking our smallest guy and having him crawl among the fiber glass insulation and roof trusses in the ceiling while wrestling ductwork? We are looking at just an installation of a new unit and removal of the old (new HVAC for old!) And we’ll replace the control unit (Control unit. We used to call them ‘Thermostats.’) The list price is $9,650.00. With our rebate it will cost $8,300.00.” “When can you install it?” Checking his computer. “Tomorrow?” These guys work fast.

I was expecting worse. We went over the contract, warrantee, guarantee, maintenance, etc. If for any reason I have a problem and their 24/7 service line can’t fix it withing 24 hours, I will get $500.00 per day to stay in a motel on the Black Sea while they figure it out. Lovely. And I was on my way.

The next day, which happened to be a Saturday, I picked up a pressure washer from Home Depot, along with a hundred foot long hose and two gallons of soap rated for siding and sidewalks. It was extra soapy, I guess. The gunk on my deck and ramp, that the leaky gutter had been basting? had passed the stage of anerobic digestion and was rapidly morphing into petroleum production. Even with close range, high pressure water drilling, it wouldn’t come off. I had to douse it with soapy water, pressure wash it, move on to other parts of my house, come back later, do it again. Then do it again. Thrice.

The side walks in front of my house, as well as the cement steps to the front door, were hideous. Two concrete lions on either side of my steps were visibly relieved when I sluiced them. Finally. We are a pride again. I had a kayak leaning against my garage that had begun to grow a green beard over the past two years. Gross. I got up on a ladder and washed as much as I could of my roof, which was green and beginning to grow moss. Florida living.

During all of this pressurized madness four vans and a jeep showed up. “Can we drive onto your back yard?” “Ya, sure.” “Where is your septic tank?” “Psssh! How should I know?” That’s another problem I will have to think about. Some day. Not this day.

The team of technicians were very quick, professional, and courteous. One needed to come into my dining room to replace the Moon Unit on my wall. He commented on a marquetry I had on my floor. One of the projects I undertook was to replace the rotting carpet in my living room and dining room with an oak floor. It is much cleaner and crisper as opposed to the cheap carpet which is anything but. Carpets hold a multitude of sins. And beer stains. As part of the project, I made a marquetry insert for the floor. It is a scene made from several species of wood; oak, walnut, maple, zebrawood, cherry, and a few others; that depicts a palm tree growing out of an island overhanging the sea, the sun and moon reflecting on the water from a lacewood sky. It was nice of him to notice and show his appreciation.

When they were done, they took me through an inspection of what they had done. The unit looked similar to the old one, with telltale places where the two had been melded together and the whole welded onto my house. Oh, and the whole thing had been attached to the cement slab with hurricane straps. Don’t forget hurricanes! The wiring was a little different. But the same. Electricity and amps are the same as they were in Tesla’s day. Nicola, that is. Not that other one. The new thermostat was quite different.

It is, as all things are today, Smart!

The thermostat can do all sorts of shit that we used to do with our fingers and our sensory organs and our brains in the past. Only better. It very nostalgically just looks like a dial on the wall. Like the old thermostats of yesteryear that just dialed up and dialed down. Up for more of whatever it was doing, heating or cooling, and down for less. But this one is deceiving. It is programmable.

First and foremost, it can be a plain old thermostat, which is all I really wanted, with a bit extra. Let me explain. My garage door opener has a module that I installed which allows me to control it remotely using my cell phone. If I remember that I forget to shut the door while standing in the boarding queue in Istanbul for a flight to Moscow I can bring up an app and punch the garage door icon and voila! The door closes thousands of miles away. I kind of wanted that just in case my security system alerted me that a burglar was stealing my prized spam collection and I could turn the heat up real high to burn him out of my house. It could happen.

But the smart thermostat had other ideas. Other, nasty ideas. It has a learning mode where it records my actions and mimics them, like some silicon parrot. So if every day at 4:00 O’clock I turn the thermostat down a notch it will start doing that automatically.

OK, yah. Don’t do that.

Even worse, there is an ‘Eco’ mode where, if I understand correctly, it can do things like notice that I have left my house and am a fair distance away, not just sharpening the spikes on my security fence facing the schoolyard, and turn the heat pump off, thus saving precious resources.

Stop following me you perv.

Or it can automatically go from cooling mode to heating mode depending on the outside temperature, the weather forecast as provided by Google, and fate. “I see that you are in New Orleans this week, Dave. And you forgot to turn your heat pump off to conserve energy. I’ll just attend to that little detail for you. And you will be happy.” My smart house is talking to me. Should I be concerned? And my name is not Dave. “And your carbon allotment is almost met for this month, Dave. I’ll just turn down your oxygen supply.”

This, the garage door controller and the environment controller, is all part of an app, of course. It is called Google Hive and is downloadable from the app store. Well, it’s not really called Goggle Hive, I made that one up. They call it, ‘Google Nest’ but it’s the same thing.

Google Nest. It’s all part of the Great Reboot, Great Retort, Great Reset. Great-Whatever. Or the Davos’ neo-serfdom, ‘You’ll own nothing and you’ll shut up about it,’ crowd. That’s where benevolent rich people will take over the dull and boring aspects of running our lives so we can work in company towns, buy from company stores, play video games, and donate organs-play organs, I mean. We will all be musicians.

Oh, and I fixed my gate. It only took ten trips back and forth from Home Depot and a bag of cement. Maybe I should install a security system. A new guard shack for virtual Sgt. Schultz. Does Google have one of those?

Of course they do.