No respite from the heat for air conditioning installers
Hazlet, N.J. — As Mike Passeggio went about his work this week, the sun did so as well, melting his frozen plastic water bottle as he hauled old ducts and other air conditioning equipment from the attic of a house here.
“You got to do something, put music on or something, and don’t think about it,” Passeggio, 26, said of the sweltering heat that makes attics hotter and stuffier than other parts of a home. “Think cold.”
The irony of the environment these workers and others like them deal with to make others more comfortable was not lost on them as they applied their air conditioning knowledge amid oppressive humidity and temperatures in the 90s.
For those shuffling around in attics to install a new system or repair an old one, it is more like the low 100s.
This was why Joseph and Metta Morris, who own the home where Passeggio and his colleague, Mike Detamore, 28, were working Wednesday, tried to make the job a little more bearable. The couple put a fan and a cooler filled with a half-dozen bottles of frozen water in the attic.
“It does help,” Passeggio said of the fan. “If there were no air moving around up here, it’d be even more horrible.”
The two men moved around on their knees, navigating the typical clutter of an attic — packed Christmas decorations, a bicycle and several storage boxes. Two frozen water bottles thawed on top of the cooler as a thermometer held by a reporter read 107 degrees.
“My husband works for Verizon, always setting up wires and stuff,” Metta Morris said. “He knows what the guys are going through up there.”
The temperature in the attic varied from a low of 99 degrees to a high of 120 degrees, depending on where the hand-held thermometer was aimed. The 88-degree temperature on the second floor was a welcome relief compared with the steamy storage area.
Detamore wore a sweat-soaked red T-shirt and had a second shirt ready.
“That’s the job,” he said.
And it is a job that is in especially high demand during stretches of hot, steamy weather. Chris Baker, owner of C&C Air Conditioning and Heating, the company in the Belford section of Middletown that Detamore and Passeggio work for, said calls go up exponentially when temperatures soar.
“We usually get 40 calls in a day,” Baker said. “Those calls go up to about 120” a day for air conditioning to be installed or to repair a unit that is not working.
Baker said his employees sometimes have to stop working when it gets dangerously hot.
“Typically it’s between 15 and 30 degrees hotter than outside,” he said of attics. And employees are advised not to consult a thermometer, he added, because it is better if “you don’t remind yourself of how hot it is.”
Dmytro Zholobchuk, who works for Air Conditioner Installation by Vlad in Brooklyn, had a similar experience Wednesday while installing a system in Prospect Heights.
“It was very hot,” he said. “When it gets like that, I drink a lot of cold water before and if it gets really bad, I go to my car and turn on the air conditioning.”
Ranjit Singh, who has owned Cool Air in Long Island City, Queens, for 14 years, said the small window units that are popular in the city have become easier to set up without a professional, so spikes in heat do not bring added calls.
“That’s a percentage of business that’s not there anymore,” Singh said.
Baker said his company, which was founded by his father over 50 years ago, has the opposite problem in the Monmouth County area.
“We could do more if we had the manpower,” he said.
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