Installing an Air Conditioner

I finally caved in. returning from maine to nyc was a shock to my system. Instead of comfortably cool nights with ocean breezes, our bedroom was 90 degrees and stuffy. i couldn’t sleep well all night long. When we did awake, we headed straight for the hardware store to purchase an air conditioner. Given my longstanding feud with my neighbor Pat regarding his air conditioner noise, (click here for air conditioning saga) I can imagine his expression when he returns to the city to find I’ve installed an AC in my window. All last summer, we told him we keep our windows open for natural ventilation and his AC installation made too much noise.

With nyc still in shutdown mode, we didn’t encounter any traffic while driving to the hardware store. There, I hauled a couple AC’s and mounting brackets up an escalator. I phoned the superintendent of the building and asked if he could help me install the machines. F. is a Kosovo Albanian immigrant. He was a rich potato farmer before the war flushed him out. I remember he tried to tell me stories about male potatoes and female potatoes. now he lives in the basement of the building and works 2 jobs to get by.

Usually you tip the super for work he helps with. It’s a gray area, there’s no price list for services rendered. sometimes he does a good job, other times you regret engaging the super and feel like you hired a potato farmer with no building maintenance qualifications (like the time he came to unclog the toilet and scratched the enamel of the bowl so bad with a terrible snake job you ended up replacing the toilet).

I tried to manage his expectations of the tip and said I lost my job when he asked me how I was doing. He replied his father had just passed away yesterday at the age of 86 and that he couldn’t fly to Albania since all the borders are closed to americans, he trumped any excuse I had for tipping him small.

The trick to installing an AC in nyc is to ensure it doesn’t fall out the window and kill someone. F, has a special way to ensure this. He screws a metal L-angle to the top of the bracket on top of the machine that is wider than the window opening. Should someone try to open the window, the AC would be kept from falling by the metal angle. It was an ingenious solution… a solution I’m surprised no AC manufacturer has thought about marketing. When he left, I tipped him large for his insight on how to install an AC like an Kosovo Albanian potato farmer.

see L angle screwed into top of AC