Bad Dye Job
Category: Kitchen Sink...
Posted Monday, September 19, 2005 at 04:32 PM [GMT-6]

No, I'm not referring to The Donald's hairdo.

This has been the Summer of Our Air Conditioning Discontent, as we've had the service folks out three times (and counting) to deal with ineffective a/c. Each time, they've diagnosed the problem as insufficient refrigerant and have recharged the system with a substance that's more valuable than premium unleaded gasoline. Each time, we enjoy a few weeks of indoor cooling and then the system returns to its previous state of disillusionment and despair (and TXU Energy shareholders rejoice).

So, at the second visit we agreed that we perhaps should seek to find the cause for the vanishing refrigerant, and the technician applied what's known as a "dye kit," which is simply an injection into the system of a substance that is visible only when exposed to ultraviolet light. The theory is that the dye will recreate the effect of a '70s stoner's college dorm room around the point of the refrigerant leak, and we'll then know if we're dealing in tens of thousands of dollars of repair or merely thousands.

The service dudes returned last Thursday at my request to check the system, which was laboring 24/7 to maintain 80 degrees in the house (and causing TXU Energy to declare a special celebratory dividend). They confirmed the obvious: we were low on coolant...but they didn't bring their special leak checking kit (which I later learned consisted of a black plastic sheeting and a flashlight with UV LEDs). But they went ahead and recharged the system, and vowed to return the next morning and ferret out the source of the problem.

They showed up as promised early the next day, with black plastic and portable black light (man, where was that technology in 1971?), and commenced to sleuthing. About thirty minutes later, the chief inspector came in, shaking his head. "We can't find the leak," he said.

To make a long story short, we had been the victim of a faulty dye kit. Our system had apparently been injected with slacker dye which refused to fluoresce on command. The manufacturer had sent out a recall notice for the bad dye, but by the time the service company had received it, the kits had already been dispersed among the service crews and they couldn't trace them back to the offending serial numbers. The technician told me that ours was the third house in which he'd encountered this problem.

The result was that they expended yet another dye kit -- one that presumably understands and accepts its role in life -- and will return later this week to try again to find the leak. We're still staying cool inside (and TXU Energy executives are booking their recreational moonflights), even as the outside temps continue to run 10-15 degrees above normal. The thing is, I can't decide on what the best outcome for all this should be. On the one hand, if it's an easily fixed leak (very doubtful, by the way), that's a good short term solution but it still leaves us with a relatively inefficient 20+ year old system...and electricity ain't gonna get any cheaper over, say, the next century or so (and TXU Energy will have purchased The Bahamas). But the alternative of installing a new energy-efficient system involves mucho dinero which could be better spent on movie tickets and ITMS downloads and other necessities of life.

But I'll tell you one thing. If we end up going the latter route, I'm going to insist that they throw in one of those UV flashlights!