New Minisplit AC Units

I finally convinced Bobby that we needed some sort of air-conditioning unit in the front living room. Actually, I think he has given up arguing with me at this point about it.  Ha!  Well, the day finally came almost 2 weeks ago now.  Hooray!!!

Poor Charlie has to do his PE on the side of the house, as Bobby had his call on the back patio:

A few hours later... the first AC unit is up!  It is not quite working yet as the guys still need to make all the connections:

In the meantime, school is still in session and everyone is gathered around the dining room table:

I eventually switched Graham to this other side of the table so I could keep an eye out on him actually paying attention to his teacher.  And that way, I can have my usual spot back at the dining table too:

Check out the remote for the new AC unit.  YIKES!  It's like we are trying to operate an airplane here.  Ha ha!

Graham's turn to do PE!  

Graham's room will be getting a mini-split unit too.  It was a bit tricky for the contractors to route the electrical work and plumbing to the condenser on the opposite wall, but I'm glad it worked out!

Here's the piping that had to go in the attic.  It has a long way to travel from one side of the house to the other!

Here's our new condenser - the unit is a bit bigger, in case we need to accommodate a third mini-split unit in Charlie's room:

It doesn't look like we need a unit in Charlie's room as of yet, as the one in the living room is somewhat able to cool his room too.  Although, we won't really know for sure until next summer because we are already on a downward cooling trend now!  But in the meantime, we are already enjoying the cool air from this new front unit!  Did you know that the air coming out is actually 10-15 degrees cooler than what is set on the thermostat (or remote control)? Ours was actually 20 degrees cooler... talk about efficient!

I was really hoping to route the drain from the living room unit into the rain barrel, but somehow it was just not doable.  So here is what the contractors ended up doing - digging a hole in the concrete and draining the water into the side of the house.  I wasn't very happy about this but I had our foundation guy/contractor come out and he said it's minimal so it will be ok.  I hope he is right!

Here is the pump that pumps the water out from the living room unit:

Our garage is looking even more busy with more ductwork going above/along the roof-line:

Here is the other drain from the unit in Graham's room - directed into the rain barrel.  Yay!  It's not much but I feel better about saving some water since our rain barrels are almost always empty now during the summer time:

New electrical work outside from the panel/box:

So many tools!

We had to shift Graham's bunk bed to the side so the guys could work in the area to put the AC up:

We decided to just take the top bunk down:

Graham seems to be happier now!  Especially with the new AC on too:

The AC contractors started working on Thursday and by Friday morning.... NOOOOooooo...!!! Mice droppings!!! BLAHHHH!!!

It was right by our toaster, and what's more frustrating is I actually had set a couple of mouse traps in the kitchen too!  And yet they preferred the toaster instead of peanut butter crackers??!

I had accidentally left some breadsticks out one night and by morning, I had noticed one of the breadsticks was off the plate and I also noticed some nibbling.  So I'm not exactly sure if the mouse (or mice) had come in before the AC work or during.  Either way, I found this huge hole that the contractor had left on the side of our garage.  The yellow color is actually the light coming in where all the hoses and pipes are coming through the wall:

All the bikes were out of the way, so I was able to access this area.  I figured I might as well seal it up with some foam:

I did email and call the boss from the AC company to send his guys back out to seal any other spots.  I wasn't sure if perhaps parts of the attic were unsealed. I hope the contractor wasn't being lazy or anything, but he said everything else was sealed.  Otherwise, the lines/pipes were really tight along the openings too.  I hope he realizes that a mouse only needs a hole the size of a pencil to go through!  Anyway, I did have him seal along the lines outside near the condenser.  That's what the yellow stuff is:

Knock on wood, so far so good!  We haven't seen any evidence of mice since Friday night. There was movement from our security camera this morning around 1am and I noticed it was a cat!  I hope it caught some mice!!!

Yesterday, I also noticed that our little gravel hole was filling up with lots of debris so I ended up using some leftover stucco wire mesh.  Looks like it is working to catch all the dead bougainvillea flowers.  Funny enough, I think these flowers are coming from 2 neighbors up the street from us!

Well, that's it for now!  I'm so glad the two mini-split units are finally in and hopefully, the mice issue is also under control.  The weather has cooled down quite a bit these past few days.  We might be using the AC units more so for heat instead of cooling very soon.  Ha ha!