A New Utility for the Home

At the end of the year we bought a big, expensive compressor to put into the saw room at the office, something that required hours of study time on the part of my father to become a compressor-specialist of sorts.  We hired out the electrical, of course, but dad did all the hoses and clamps and other stuff himself.  Partly to save us some money, and partly because my dad likes nothing more in life than to become a pseudo-expert in obscure skills.

 

Did you know that compressed air is the 3rd most important utility in industrialized nations, behind electricity (1st) and water (2nd)?  Neither did I.

 

By my father’s logic, we use the first two in houses, why not the third?

 

I have noted my parents’ eccentricities before; you’d think I would stop being surprised by what they come up with.  But now this: my dad has decided to pipe his garage and house for compressed air.

 

The garage I can sort of understand (except for the fact that this will be an undertaking of epic proportions – the garage is HUGE).  After all, drills and hammers and nail guns can be pneumatic.  But the house?  Can you even imagine?

 

Dad would probably start by tearing out the motors in some crucial portion of the house – kitchen appliances, let’s say.  Mom would be without oven or microwave while dad rebuilt the motors to be pneumatically driven… and then mom would have the FASTEST MICROWAVE and the HOTTEST OVEN ON THE PLANET.  Compressed air is powerful.  I can see mom pulling a hose off of the wall and instead of vacuuming the house, simply blowing all the dust and dog hair out the door in one big cloud.  The clothes dryer would probably work pretty well, and the hair-dryer, too, if a compressed-air hairdryer didn’t rip your hair from its roots.  Super-speed blender?  You got it.  Coffee grinder to turn your beans into the finest dust?  Absolutely.

 

I told dad that he could then put in one of those systems like they have in bank drive-throughs.  It would be like a pneumatic intercom: mom, in the kitchen, could put a note in the jar and send it to dad in the office to ask him what he wanted for lunch.  Whoosh!

 

I’m not sure they see the absurdity in all this.  My parents are so ridiculous, I’m fairly certain that they think all of these are great ideas.  Lucky for me, there will be a new crazy idea within the next month or so.