Your HVAC Troubleshooting Guys

I have some good news! My friend Sam and I resolved our lingering issues, and it seems like our friendship is on solid ground again.

A word to the wise – don’t let money get in the way of a good friendship.

A few months ago Sam was in a tight spot financially speaking, and he asked me for a favor. At the time it was the middle of Summer, the weather was humid and the temps were in the 90s every a single day. The air conditioner in Sam’s house broke down, and he simply affords to pay for repairs. I gave him the phone numbers for a few local HVAC companies that offered free estimates. A few days later Sam had a repair cost estimate from six different businesses, and he couldn’t afford any of them! It would take a bare minimum of two thousand bucks to have his central AC system repaired. As a compromise, I told him that he could buy a window-mounted air conditioner, which would be enough to cool down his bedroom or his living room (but not both). Sam didn’t have the cash for that, either, so being a good friend I took him to the hardware store and spent $400 on a small AC unit for him. After that I didn’t see Sam around as much, mostly because he felt ashamed that I paid for this air conditioner and he couldn’t pay me back. It was only last weekend that he invited me over to his house – he showed me that his central AC was working again, and he repaid my money. Problem solved.

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What started off as a minor AC issue turned into a big personal issue between old friends, and I couldn’t feel worse about it! I have known Ed for over five years now, and he is one of the nicest and hardest-working guys I’ve even met.

Ed is a line cook for a local diner, he is a single dad, and a few months ago he started studying to earn his HVAC certification. Ed doesn’t have a lot of education, and he discovered that HVAC techs make excellent money without having to spend 4 to 6 years in school. He thought the best way to provide for his daughter, and build a real career, was in the HVAC industry. Fast forward to a few months ago, and I asked Ed to come over and help me with an AC problem I was having. Ed had achieved his HVAC certification, but was still a rookie who lacked a lot of hands-on experience in the field. My air conditioner had stopped working, and I couldn’t afford to call for a contractor, so Ed was happy to help a friend in need. Here is where the problem started – Ed could not determine the cause of my problem, and didn’t know how to fix it. This made him feel embarrassed, because he said he could help me fix this AC unit and wound up letting me down. Ed thought he had let me down, I wasn’t upset with him at all! Nonetheless, Ed became more distant and our friendship suffered, because he still felt embarrassed about the air conditioning issue.

a/c installation

Usually, I like to talk about the latest and greatest advances in HVAC technology, but this time I want to speak from the heart.

I recently went through a big debacle involving my house, and the poor work that went into building it, and I wanted to share it.

This is real talk! I bought this house at the perfect time, right in the middle of the first COVID outbreak, so the market was weak. If I had waited six more months, I could not have afforded this house. No house is free of issues, and this place had more than a few. There is a central HVAC system in the main part of the house, that covers the living areas and the childrens bedrooms. The other end of the house used to be a 2-car garage, but was converted into a master bedroom/bathroom suite with its own dedicated HVAC system. At first I thought this was great, but less than 1 year later I came to find out the renovations were poorly done, and the HVAC system was incorrectly installed. The problem was one of placement, and the contractor had installed the second HVAC system in such a weird place that it could not be accessed. That meant when it broke down, the AC repair tech tried his best but simply could not get into a position to make the repairs. Heck, he couldn’t even inspect the HVAC unit, it was too far back in the crawlspace! Now I have a useless HVAC system in my attic, with no way to fix it or even remove it.

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I did not have five to eight thousand dollars laying around to spend on a new air conditioner system.

I was telling you about the issue I had with the air conditioner in the crawlspace of my house. This was done long before I moved into this house, so it’s an issue that I inherited, not one I created. Basically, the contractor who installed it was an amateur. The person did terrible work, did not get proper permits, and did not do a level of work that was “up to code.” The AC equipment is located in the crawlspace over my bedroom closet, but it is situated in such a way that it can’t be easily accessed. I had a local HVAC tech come by to check it out and offer a price estimate for the repairs, and he flat-out said that it couldn’t be done. The only way to remedy the situation was to cut that HVAC off of the main power grid, abandon it, and install a new system somewhere else in the attic. I did not have five to eight thousand dollars laying around to spend on a new air conditioner system. On the other hand, this is the Deep South, and the summer months are wicked, so I couldn’t just forgo having any kind of cooling system. I decided to check out the local hardware stores and see what they had in terms of a smaller, more affordable air conditioner. I was blown away by the number of options! I knew about window-mounted AC units, but there were a lot of new, portable air conditioners that were strong enough to cool down one whole side of my home.

a/c installation