08/20/2026
HVAC Story Time!
Yesterday after getting off of work here at Ellibee AC, I went to my townhome and ventured up the stairs. It was beginning to get warm up there, but I thought that maybe it was because the blinds were all open (so that my cats can sunbathe properly.) I thought nothing of it, turned on the ceiling fans in both rooms, went back downstairs, ate a bite of food, and journeyed off to my restaurant job to "serve". Serve is in quotations because I mostly go there to hang out with my friends and make some money on the side instead of rotting on my couch all day after leaving Ellibee AC.
Anywho, I got home around 11pm and once again journeyed up the stairs. Although, this time I stopped in my tracks at about the 9th step due to my breath getting sucked out of my lungs due to the abrupt layer of heat I had just unknowingly stumbled into. I caught my breath, travelled up the last 8 steps and went into both rooms to see if this was a weird hallway thing, or if it was a weird upstairs thing. The verdict was that it is was a weird upstairs thing. Now, a little backstory here, my boyfriend had changed our filter (finally...) earlier that day before he went to work. My first thought was that he somehow put it in wrong and it was now suffocating our ventilation system. But the next lightbulb went off in my brain and I decided to check the thermostat.
I looked at it and saw no numbers... weird... I squinted my eyes and looked a little closer to see that it was actually set to "Fan only" mode. Upon further investigation, the fan was also set to "off". Right. My first thought was that there was a ghost in my house who just really wanted to suffocate us, my second thought is that a maintenance man showed up and fiddled with something. As I am sitting on the top stair, racking my brain (and saying hello to my sweet kitties who have been patiently awaiting my return in the heat all day), my boyfriend got home. I told him about the mysterious intruder who stole nothing but our cool air, and then I suddenly think to ask him about the filter change. He explains that since it's hard to reach the filter, he messed with the thermostat to get the vent to suck the filter in itself while he stands there staring at it. We both realized at seemingly the same moment that he pressed one too many buttons on the thermostat and never changed it back to normal.
Yeah. There was no mystery intruder, just my boyfriend and a filter change gone wrong. Not to worry though, we turned on the bathroom ventilation and had a fan blowing the nice cool air from downstairs, up to where we were. We also fixed the thermostat lol. It cooled off pretty quickly soon after all of that.
So, this is your friendly reminder to check your thermostat before AND after changing your filter… and also to actually change your filter in the first place (every 1–3 months)!
Do as we say, not as we do.
- Rece
