Exterior Water Service Line Coverage
$7.95/mo
$23.85/qtr
$95.40/yr
It was hot.
Really hot; a heat dome had settled over Oklahoma in July, and it was only expected to get hotter with days over 100 degrees Fahrenheit expected. Add the high humidity to the mix, and, despite what the mercury read, it felt like 105 or even 110 degrees.
Dangerously hot.
And, in the Bixby home Christopher and his brother shared, their air conditioner was laboring, but they weren’t feeling any cooling effect.
One night, Chris and his brother were freezing. The next day, they were boiling.
“The night before, it got super cold, it felt like we were freezing,” he said. “But the next morning, the heat started going up and up and up and up. When it got to 100 degrees, we were like, ‘yup, the A/C is broken.’”
Christopher and his brother looked for solutions for their problem. They had an HVAC company come out to look at the unit and got unwelcome news: The HVAC company Christopher consulted said it would be $11,000 to replace the unit or it would be $8,000 to repair it.
“They said they needed to put in a new compressor and needed to put in a different version of the coolant, because the one it had is no longer available. Well, I understand that, but we didn’t have $8,000, let alone $11,000.”
Christopher and his brother didn’t have the money, and no one in their family were able to help them, although they had expressed a willingness to do so – their family didn’t have that money either.
“The best we could do was swamp coolers,” Christopher said. “It brought the temperature down five or ten degrees, but my brother and I were sitting in front of our fans.”
As a young man, Christopher had been in desert environments while in the military and had experienced several heat-related health issues. This heat not only evoked memories of those health emergencies, but as his temperature crept up, he started feeling more than uncomfortable – he started feeling dizzy and disoriented.
“So, I started looking around for some way to fix it,” Christopher said. “I just happened to run across this website that was talking about here’s help for people who are struggling. So, I filled out a form, then I got an email and a call from [HomeServe’s customer experience specialist] Tammy. She was nice throughout the whole thing. It helped a lot that she was so nice and understanding. She explained the situation and was very understanding. She helped walk me through the process and get together everything I needed.”
Christopher had found a reference to the HomeServe Cares Foundation, the charitable arm of HomeServe, a leading company in home repair solutions. The Foundation provides pro bono repairs for emergency situations that impact safety, sanitation and quality of life for qualifying homeowners.
Once his application had been approved by the Foundation, things began moving quickly – the Foundation dispatched one of HomeServe’s local, reliable network contractors to assess the unit and decide whether it could be repaired or needed to be replaced. It was quickly found that all that needed to be done to get Christopher’s unit up and working was a new capacitor.
Air Assurance sent a technician out to replace the capacitor in Christopher’s unit, and it was back up and running correctly – and more importantly, bringing temperatures down in their home to a comfortable level. It didn’t cost Christopher anything, since the HomeServe Cares Foundation picked up the $260 repair cost.
“I thought I was going to spend the entire summer boiling,” he said.
Published AUGUST 15, 2025