Step One: decide where to drill the hole.
Step Two: drill the hole.
Step Three: finish.
Simple. Easy. Nothing to it.
If only things were that easy in the real life of an anonymous family living in an un-named location in, well, an Asian country. This family, whoever they are, have two zircon units in their downstairs living area and both work wonderfully, except for the unit that doesn’t. That unit always leaked all over the floor ten minutes after it was switched on. Consequently the family chose not to use it.
That was until one day when the family decided that the unit really should be made to work properly rather than leak. The family took the sensible decision to contact the housing estate management office for advice and the office sent round the resident technician. The technician said it was the landlord’s problem and it needed repairing because the unit was leaking. If only the family had been able to come to that brilliant observation too. The family considered describing the technician in terms of being a chocolate teapot, but decided against it.
The family asked an aircon expert to come and clean the unit, and others, which the aircon expert did. This expert also worked out that the poorly unit was leaking, but because it needed a new pipe to flow outside the house it was a problem to be solved by the management office.
The management office promised to talk to the landlord. Months went by. Nothing happened. The management office clearly did not contact the landlord. The family did not use the poorly aircon unit.
Around one month ago the family contacted a proper aircon expert, a bloke who knows how to do things properly (not in the gangster / mafia sense) and he finally worked out the problem. The proper aircon expert worked out that the genius who designed the house had thought it was very unsightly to have outflow pipes on the outside of houses and so had decided to embed the aircon outflow pipes inside one foot thick concrete walls, this making repair on possible by knocking down large parts of walls. A design genius, clearly. Running short of piping the installation genius had not connected the aircon unit up properly to the outflow pipe. The proper expert diagnosed fitting a new outflow pipe, inside the house and then installing (after drilling a hole) a low-level outflow pipe to the outside drain.
All that had to be done was get approval from the management office to drill a hole. Yes you did read that bit right… get permission from the management office to drill a hole.
The proper aircon expert arrived to undertake the work on Sunday only to be told that the rules, known as Policy (capitalised due to the way in Policy is bestowed on lowly human beings by powers beyond the understanding of mortals) did not allow drilling on a Sunday. Incredulous the family asked when Policy did allow drilling. Apparently the good people of Desa Park City could drill to their hearts content between the hours of 9.00am and 3.00pm, six days per week, but never outside these hours. Policy dictated so. But the family’s aircon expert could not come to house between those times. Stalemate. Drilling could not be done. Policy.
Somehow or other, thanks to filling in of various forms, complex logistical arrangements, rictus grins and not telling various characters where Policy should be shoved, the hole, approximately two centimetres in diameter, was drilled and the job was finished. Not before the management office insisted, once again, that any drilling be completed before the afternoon drilling curfew.
So that family now have two fully functioning aircon units and the correctly drilled hole in the right place. And what have the family learned? Well the importance of doing the best job possible in the first place (note to house designers and builder the world over and Desa Park City), the local drilling Policy and that the world inhabited by the management office folk is only a short distance form the world known to many as “real life.”
PS. One of the members of this anonymous family is very tempted to buy their first ever drill plus a large pile of rocks and spend six hours each Saturday drilling away for the shear hell of it.