So I come home after a long day and I ask the Wife “Wouldn’t it be nice to take the kids and walk to the pool?”, to which she replies “Wouldn’t it be nice if you bought a replacement belt for the attic fan and installed it in the sweltering heat?” to which I said “Sure!”

We needed a 52″ “V-belt”, so I let my fingers do the walking.  Ace Hardware had none, a representative from Home Depot proudly told me they sold attic fans but had no replacement parts for those fans (why on earth would a home improvement store sell replacement parts, anyway?), and a confused lady at Auto Zone told me unless I had a catalog number (instead of the mystical riddle “52 inch fan belt”) she could not help me, but the awesome folks at Murray’s Discount Auto not only had it, but set it aside for me, and Coop and I picked it up in about 10 minutes for six bucks.

For those of you who have never installed an attic fan belt, you can’t just loop on a new belt between the big wheel that turns the fan and the little wheel on the motor, because they are far enough apart to make the tension to keep the belt on.  Instead, you have to loosen the bolts holding the motor platform to the two rods on either side, sliiiide the motor platform up, attach the belt, then push the motor belt down and re-secure the bolts.   And all his in the sweltering, shadowy, insulation-filled loveliness of your attic.  Piece of cake!

20 minutes later I was done and the fan was working.  There are still some issues with the ceiling vent opening fully when the fan is running (we are theorizing the vents themselves, which seem to be custom-made, may be too heavy to be opened up by the wind pressure), but the manly part is complete (or was complete once I vacuumed up the mess from the insulation out of my closet, stripped off my filthy attic clothes, and took a long shower).

Next up:  Moving the entire house six degrees to the East to improve our Feng Shui. 

  

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 5:05 am and is filed under Home Improvements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.