I hadn't gotten any work done for almost three weeks, due to travel and a major winter storm. I booked Thursday afternoon and Friday off, and was really looking forward to getting back at the project. I got home from work after lunch on Thursday, planning to quickly change and head for the hangar. But, I noted that the house was quite cold, and found that the water source heat pump was not working. I called our local heating and cooling contractor, and waited for him to show up. He came by mid-afternoon, did some disassembly and troubleshooting, and determined that the compressor had failed. Worse, the heat pump manufacturer had gone out of business many years ago, and parts were hard to find. And, the heat pump had already exceeded its expected lifetime, and many other components looked to be in bad shape. He recommended that I replace it with a new heat pump, rather than spending a bunch of money on one that was on its last legs.

That killed Thursday afternoon. I had to go to Home Depot to purchase three electric heaters to knock the chill off the house, and I had to contact an official auditor to discuss how to tap into a government grant program to fund energy efficient upgrades. My heating contractor said they would cover part of the cost of a new heat pump, even if the old one was dead, as long as the new one met some magic energy efficiency standard. I made an appointment with the auditor for Friday afternoon. Monday I'll contact another heating contractor to get another quote on a new heat pump, as the price the first guy quoted me was a whole bunch more than I expected. I need to figure out whether he was fishing to make some money, or whether these things are really that expensive. If it costs as much as he quoted me, I'll have to cash in a bunch of my banked comp time rather than using it to work on the aircraft.

I had known that this brand heat pump didn't have a great service history, that the manufacturer was long gone, and that ours was getting pretty tired. So, I'm not terribly surprised that it has died. But I am not happy to be spending a bunch of money and time on it, when I really just want to get this aircraft in the air. The only consolation is that apparently the current generation heat pumps are much better quality than the one that died.

Friday morning I did manage to get out to the hangar to get some work done. Nothing major to report, but I did close off a few very small items. It seems like I spent most of the time making a list of the stuff that I should have brought with me, but had left in the basement.