Top Ten "Day" 7

Last year I was helping a community in Detroit get ready for an inspection, going through 100% of their apartments and fixing pretty much anything that needed to be fixed.  I worked with a team of four guys for almost three weeks preparing for the inspection.  What an interesting three weeks it was!  I could write a book of stories just from that short three weeks but there was one that really took the cake.

We were about a week into the project.  Every morning we would meet with the maintenance supervisor to discuss the upcoming apartments and go over anything of importance from the day before.  On this particular day he had to warn us of a resident in one of the apartments we would be working in.  He told us she had been a little unruly lately because she swore her heat wasn't working properly.  He asked if we could look at it, but he swore it was working.

We reached her apartment about noon on a nice fall day.  It was about 65 outside temp and when we entered her apartment we all instantly broke out into a heavy sweat.  One of my guys leaned over to me and said "It has to be 90 degrees in here.  I'm going to pass out!"

The resident immediately started in about how she couldn't get her heat to work correctly and we needed to fix it.  She swore her thermostat wasn't reading correctly.  I instantly knew I wasn't going to be able to convince this resident without physical, visual proof.  I pulled out my digital thermometer and took her outside.  After reading the temp outside and showing her it was within 3 degrees of the local news temp I stuck it into one of her heat registers.  The resulting temp was 97 degrees!  She was so shocked, she even called the maintenance supervisor and apologized. 

I have used my digital thermometer for many things, finding temp differentials for charging air conditioners, convincing residents that hot water, heat, and air conditioning is working, and even during the repair of ovens and refrigerators.  It is something that I keep in my on-call bag at all time.


I use one similar to this Cooper Atkins model, it is water proof and reads fairly quickly.  It is nice and compact and fits into the smaller pockets on my tool bag.  The hold function combined with the digital readout is perfect for proving to residents that their equipment is operational and is nice for those tight spaces.  The protective sheath is also nice as it protects the probe from damage.  Save yourself the headache of dealing with a "delusional" resident and get yourself a digital pocket thermometer quick.