August Air Conditioner Search — Which North Central CT Town Had It?

HARTFORD COUNTY, CT — So ... was it possible to find a particular and popular air conditioning unit in north central Connecticut in the midst of a long heat wave? A search Tuesday was certainly an adventure.

It all began mid-afternoon at three-bedroom ranch that had smaller units of about 5,000 BTU scattered about. One of them, however, began sounding like Dory speaking whale in Nemo. The decade-old unit also began to seemingly overheat, so out of the window it went.

The air conditioning unit needed to have particular dimensions because of the window it needed to go in. A quick search online indicated that Home Depot carried the units — 5,000 BTUs (these were made by LG) that measure only a foot high.

The price of $179 seemed competitive.

A quick search showed that Manchester had six in stock, so off to the Buckland Hills retail district it was. A tour of the store showed some 6,000-BTU units on a rear shelf but none of the smaller LG units. A staffer said the 6,000-BTU units were paid for and reserved for store pickup and they were too large anyway. The staffer pointed to the front of the store, but on the floor was only one giant 10,000-BTU unit.

With a pair of apologetic eye rolls, two other staffers in Manchester said the online inventory summaries tend to lag behind and they offered to look up what area stores might have. Southington had some, but that was too far away to take the chance, they determined. Glastonbury and Bloomfield were no-gos, according to the computer in the Manchester store appliance department.

"Wait a minute ... look at this," one of the staffers said. "Enfield had an emergency delivery last night."

The computer showed there were 57 units in stock and a call to Enfield by the staffers confirmed that.

So it was off to Enfield.

Sure enough, along a main aisle at the Enfield store, the small units were in a neatly arranged display. It appeared just three of the 57 air conditioners had been sold.

The purchase took about 5 minutes.

A customer service representative at the Enfield store said he expected more activity on the units, but that it would likely happen once word began to spread that they were in stock.