May 06, 2004
Hooray for Home Ownership
Week before last, the AC went out.
For those of you not living in Atlanta: this is a crisis of Biblical proportions. Even in April.
I called around, on a Sunday, and A Guy to come out and look at it. He mumbled something about leaks, and about the age of the AC unit, filled it with coolant, charged me $180 and left.
Three days later, the AC was again blowing tepid air.
I called The Company, and very politely Was An Asshole to several layers of ablative management, and eventually convinced them to send another tech out, for free, to perform a real leak detection test.
After an hour or so of crawling around under my house, The Next Guy delivered his report: my AC and furnace were an archaeological treasure. The system is well over thirty years old, and although it is completely dead, it was evidence of Divine Providence that it had lasted this long. It seems the life expectancy of an air-conditioning system is in the range of six weeks, here in the South.
Of course, I find this out after I returned the "Do you want to renew your Home Warranty" form marked as "I would rather be eaten by wild dogs."
Knowing those scammers, I'm sure that if I'd turned in the claim, they would've said something like "We're sorry. According to your contract, Paragraph 9093, Lline 28, Subsection 32b, you have to get your furnace and AC replaced by the exact same model. Since that model is no longer made, you are required to replace it with ferrets. It's in the contract. We'll be over with the ferrets. Soon. "
So, tomorrow a bunch of scary people will be clambering around under my house, tearing things up, and for this I get to pay about $4000.
I should've stuck with the ferrets.
Posted by Eric at May 6, 2004 09:35 PMUnx,
While those guys are under your house you many want to check into getting your AC system partitioned.
For example, sectioning off the part of your house you occupy the most in the summer, and installing an adequate system there. This would allow you to install two smaller units and perhaps be cheaper in the install. I dont know about cost to operate, you may want to check on that.
Make sure they wire the units correctly. We had to have our heat pump rewired late last year because the asshats who installed it originally were using voodoo wiring not of this earth. The guy who fixed it was surprised it worked for two years. He spent a couple of hours rewiring our entire heating/cooling system. Ahhh, the joys of owning a house.
Posted by: heather at May 8, 2004 03:32 PMYes, apparantly the blower motor on my AC was wired wrong and degraded over time up until it stopped working last week. This had to be replaced and wired CORRECTLY this time. Now I have cold air in them thar ducts.
Next on the list is a good Duct cleaning.
Posted by: Daniel at May 11, 2004 04:48 PMWe got our 20 year old AC/Heating ripped out in Feb. Then again, we also had our ductwork completely ripped out and replaced. Apparently, the asshats who installed the AC unit in the first place figured the uninsulated furnace ductwork the house came with was sufficient. They also sealed up the house and all that stuff.
2.5 ton unit (small house), re-wire, duct work, new thermo came to be just a hair under 4g's.
My electricty bill shed $75 in a month..
Posted by: darkrose at May 15, 2004 05:04 AM