May 2008 was a month with record low temperatures which made the slide into summer a much longer ride. June, however, brought us record number of days of 110 and over. Being very vigilant about our electric usage to try to cover the cost of the changes we have made throughout our house, we were rewarded with an electric bill that was $100 less than the previous year. Considering how darn hot June was, we were quite pleased. July has been a very different story. This is the month when the monsoon season starts and we are hit with early evening build up of clouds, dust storms, lightning and thunderstorms and occasionally, a bit of rain to go with all of the drama. This year we have actually had rain without the drama. A few nights ago the skies got dark and around 8pm, they let loose with a tremendous amount of rain. It rained hard but not hard enough to damage plants, etc. The rain came down hard and of course, the water pooled in no time as it couldn't soak into the ground fast enough and caused problems in some areas. It rained on and off through the night and even into the next morning at some places. Over the next 2 days there was intermittent rain here and there and we actually got a wee bit of it again. We seem to live in an area that the rain avoids so we were thrilled to get as much as we did. The temperatures have been well under 100 for the past week and the humidity hasn't been all that bad as it often is when the temps drop.
However, the humidity has been very high in our house! Just before the rainy days, we experienced a bit of a leak in the overflow pipe that is supposed to drain the condensation out of our new air conditioner. It seems the pipe that drains it was clogged a bit and before the clog released itself, it did backup a bit..enough to soak the towel that John used to catch the water. Luckily he noticed a gurgling sound when he went out into the garage and caught it before it got worse. In that time though, it seems that the house pulled in humid air that wasn't having the moisture removed from it because of the clog and our house became rather humid. It began to feel like we were running an evaporative cooler rather than an air conditioner. We called out the company that had installed our unit to have them check it. They installed some little gizmo that is supposed to turn off the AC should something like this happen again. In the meantime, we didn't turn off the fan when it happened so I guess that is what continued to pull in the moist air.
We are actually now hoping for some more hot, dry days so we can open our doors in the evening and morning to do a little air exchange. We have tried that the last few days because it's been unbelievably cool for Phoenix but it only seems to help on a temporary basis. The humidity isn't as high as it had been at the worst so it's getting better but not soon enough. I actually found packaged cupcakes in our pantry today that had been subjected to the week or so of humid air and they had a bit of mold growing on them. It's suddenly like living in the east or along the coast here in our home in the desert! Crazy stuff!
