New houses, like anything else, need to be debugged. The process of discoverer glitches in houses in unfortunately, an unscientific one: Wait ’til something obvious goes wrong, like a fountain in the middle of your living room, and then repair the most obvious symptom of said problem. This waiting for something to go wrong is at first a bit taxing; it induces paranoia. Every creak, every pop, every little sound, speck, and smell attracts attention. Most times, there is nothing wrong. Then the really obvious things go bad… water flowing up the walls in an Exorcist-esque manner, washing machines behaving like garbage disposals, and the like.
Most recently, I woke up chattering. I checked the usual suspects a) did I fall asleep in the bathtub… no b) did I fall asleep in the freezer, or perhaps, outside… no again c) was there heat… no! Having a likely candidate, I went exploring in the house. Fuses looked good, thermostat seemed to work, ice cubes were falling from the “heating” vents. Next step, call the builder. It’s great calling this guy, because he has seven other apartments in this building alone filled with bitchy yuppies… there is a black cloud over this guy’s head.
So the builder sends the “fix-it” guy. The “fix-it” guy has demonstrated to be a better “break-it” guy. Mr. Fix-it can’t find a problem, so he invents one, “The, uh, capacitor, yeah that’s it; the capacitor is, uh, bruised and needs to be replaced.”
Enter Mr. HVAC-Man. Mr. HVAC-Man has a Haitian accent thicker than molasses. He takes one look at the unit and cries, “Who installed this? This is all wrong.” Needless to say Mr. HVAC-Man has not yet fixed the problem.