ANTS

[telophase]

After a not-good night in the hotel--hard mattress, and while their A/C worked, it kept going on and off all night as it hit what we set it to, then the temps rose pretty fast, then it'd come on again, so I alternately sweated and froze--we got back to the house. The temp was the exact same as when we left, which meant that it was actually 2 degrees higher than the outside. Uh, yay for good insulation?

At nay rate, myrialux called the A/C people and hooray they said they'd send out a tech. And not only did they do that, he got here an hour before their window--they called and said he was in the area, and would he be able to stop by?

After poking the thermostat, and poking around in the attic, and then poking around the unit outside, he came back in and gave us his pronouncement.

Ants.

Yup, ants. We had a colony of ants discover the electrical stuff on the outside A/C unit and wander into it, thus keeping various contacts from contacting. Solution: a can of wasp spray (because we didn't have ant spray) and a recommendation to purchase a flea collar and hang it on a couple of wires in there (he showed myrialux where), which should keep them away.

Total cost, not counting the hotel, less than 3 digits. Yay. And he said our system is doing really well for 11 years old. Even better.

I, of course, am extremely sleepy and couldn't nap because every time I laid down my brain insisted on telling me everything I've ever done wrong and that I would die someday, the way brains often do, so oh well. At least the A/C thing was painless and comparatively cheap.

edit: I spent my teen years in a house in the country where we were on well water, and every so often the pump would die and the solution for that was to go out and bang on the pump with a ball-peen hammer to dislodge the fire ants that had taken up residence so this problem and solution is not entirely foreign to me. The flea collar is an interesting touch, however.

Comments

[adafrog]

OMG, I thought that was just movie thing with the ants and electrical devices! Wow. Ad a flea collar? huh.

[telophase]

Nope, fire ants looooove electricity! No idea about other species, but I assume they do as well.

Yeah, the flea collar thing was a surprise but... well, it is an insecticide, so I can see it working. We're still going to put Amdro around the base of the A/C--that bed is on the side of the house and won't ever be used for growing food plants --and fire ants fall into the KILL IT WITH FIRE category for us.

[adafrog]

Fire ants are so very painful. I hear you on the KILL IT WITH FIRE!

[alexseanchai]

did this move-in not fry any of the ants?

[telophase]

Yeah, ants get fried, but there's just so many of them that they keep getting attracted to the electricity and frying themselves. Much like squirrels and transformers: in that house I lived in in the country, a few times a year we'd get a power outage caused by a squirrel zapping itself to death. Eventually the power company came out and out a cage thing over the transformer, thankfully for the squirrel population.

[alexseanchai]

ah, gotcha!

[yhlee]

Holy shit, ants?! I thought the ants we used to fight a never-ending battle against in Houston were terrible but this is a whole new level. I'm glad at least there's a solution and it wasn't asstastically expensive!!

[telophase]

AAAAAANTS! ANTS! ANTS! Yup!

We've never had more than one or two exploring ants show up inside the house, but it never occurred to me they'd wreak havoc outside the house! Even after living in a house where they did that regularly!

[selenite0]

Yikes. So far the ants have not damaged our house, though they did give one of the kids an ER visit (and the nickname "Dances with Fire Ants").

[telophase]

My mother tells me that when I was a wee small thing, she heard me screaming and looked out the window to see me just standing in a fire ant mound.

apparently I didn't learn my lesson and our first year in Africa I blundered into a column of army ants. Luckily my dad saw me and stripped me in half a second flat in what all field researchers in area with army ants know as The Ant Dance, in which clothes go flying. I didn't get bitten thanks to the Dad Reflexes.

[heavenscalyx]

Uhhh. Welp. At least it was inexpensive?

*clings to New England snow*
*eyes climate change nervously*

[telophase]

Yup, as far as A/C problems go, it was pretty cheap!

[movingfinger]

From one homeowner to another, congratulations on your lucky escape!

[telophase]

Thank you! We'd been entertaining any and all possibilities, up to having to replace the entire system, so a less-than-three-digit charge was quite a relief!

The slab the outside unit was on had been at an angle for a number of years (the original builders didn't build the retaining wall high enough on that side of the house) until we managed to find someone to shore it up, so we were afraid that had done something to it.

[movingfinger]

I am surprised with you that the slab being angled didn't bork something! That is impressively robust. I had SURPRISE system replacement last winter, and upgraded from air handler with heating strips to a full-house heat pump. Nice but I could have lived happily enough without A/C. It's a whole other game in the South and Southwest, though, up to and including mold...