I had never been involved in major home renovations before, whether we’re talking about planning or carrying out the actual tasks. Now, after these past few months, I hope I will never have to be a key player in critical home repairs again. I had always assumed that making big cosmetic changes to a house would take an incredible amount of money and energy, but I didn’t realize exactly how many things could go wrong. All this time, I was worried about the expertise of the crew and the quality of their work, when I really needed to be paranoid about the vengeance of the HVAC system. You see, our house had a super old heating and cooling system installed from the day we moved in. We lived with the poor air quality and high energy bills for many years, before we finally had enough money to make some major HVAC upgrades. I was really excited to get a brand new furnace, air conditioner, and smart thermostat panel, but I never anticipated that the central heating and cooling system would be so reluctant to change. As soon as the HVAC technicians started trying to remove the old AC unit, it was clear that they were in for a fight. T
he ancient air conditioner had been rooted right into the ground, and rusted onto the side of the house. As they tried to remove the monstrosity, pieces of metal from the AC box were disintegrating and falling apart in their hands. They pulled and pried the old cooling system away, but pieces of the house were coming along with the air conditioning system! When everything was all said and done, the old AC had been reduced to a pile of rusty pieces, our exterior wall was torn to shreds, and all the AC connections needed to be fully replaced.