ice thawing in a drain pan screw cavity suggests the gaping jaw of an animate large mouth bass.
when you see an eye. when I see an eye, I see something “alive”, don’t you? Pictured is the “drain pan” for my “mini-split” AC/Heating unit referred to generally as a “heat pump”. Looking closer, in the circular cavity lit up by translucent bubble is no eye. It is a screw. Nevertheless the unit does come alive. When the temperature drops below freezing or it snows come October…November depending on the year, the defrost thingie can’t keep up and the entire outdoor compressor unit moves with a life of its own, as they say. Water freezes over the drain pain’s pan’s hope hole and then rises up the pricey little tines, bending them every which way. I must spare the tines for summer survival reasons in a 263 sq ft house, as in the A/C is necessary to avoid inhabitant being baked alive. That word again. The hint of something inanimate come alive is why I thought to display the picture. I initially took the picture because there was no illustration of a “drain pan” in the manual, the manual in which it was suggested one might in some models be able to purchase a “heated drain pan” and avoid the undesirable thing that might would without fail happen when the temperature dropped below 40 degrees or with sufficient wind + snow. This particular model came pre-installed in my custom tiny house, known to be headed for Maine, the part of Maine that gets cold and snows in the winter. We are not always at our best. I personally didn’t even know what a mini split was and even after reading the manual, what a drain pan could be, or especially any idea of what it looked like, thanks to no illustration being in the manual, never mind having been stuck in PFC-Down instruction-illiterate mode by bereavement despite a career spent deciphering manuals for others, and thus I imagined I might be the first ever to photograph a drain pain in action, that is, in real life, in living color, as it were, and save somebody somewhere, some day, some trouble, if not all the trouble I was having, at least some of it. (And I did in fact, for the record, do this at least once.) At the time of the first freezing up, I did not need to see; I felt. Immersed in writing, something I used to do before the eternal crash course in physics called four-season “camping” put me on my guard for the duration, I wondered vaguely why the house was shaking, so much. In later years, if no 40mph storm “gusts” were involved, I knew “the house is shaking so much” as my signal to turn off the “unit” and that I would be pouring on the boiling water in the morning with a hair dryer, for about an hour. I might have allowed this event to unfold three or four times each late fall season before doing something more radical*. Which is what I do now prior even to the first frozen flake. But on that first dark and snowy evening, with one hand I poured boiling water from my mini tea kettle, the largest vessel I possessed, onto the drain pan’s little ice rink for four hours, while with the other hand, I waved a hair dryer or flashlight alternately. I experienced the whole procedure in extreme discomfort, in doctor-speak. The drain pan pictured below is from one of the later years during which I kept up this morning devotion, deciding the activity was “fun.” It’s difficult to recall now, but I know from records of my personal correspondence that I felt an enduring sense of visceral delight, having escaped my nemesis automation, at using my hands to do something practical, something I didn’t even know how to do, but that I must do - even a recurring thrill, akin to being alive. The madness has since stopped. But I have a photograph.
*Look at the thermometer, then the weather forecast or just out the window. Snowing? Below freezing overnight? Turn ‘unit’ off; wrap it up, employ another heating $ource until late April.