My Old House

On Monday, I emailed my fellow neighbors and asked them for HVAC company recommendations.

You see, last Wednesday, after a particularly warm day, I left a phone message for Frechin Heating and Cooling (the people who installed our furnace last Fall) at 9:25 AM. When my wife got home at 3 PM, she didn’t see any messages, so she called Frechin herself. They told her they never received any message from me.

OK, so this got my feathers ruffled a little already. But Frechin had told her they’d be out at 8:30 AM Friday… so we decided to wait.

As you may recall, the purpose for this visit was to fix the external condenser unit, which failed to fire up when we turned the system on for the first time this cooling season.

Well, Friday morning comes. It’s my first day off of five. I’m anxious to go have breakfast out with my wife… or run to WalMart or the hardware store… anything! Instead, we wait around the house… and wait… and wait. Finally, at 9:30 AM, one hour AFTER Frechin was suppossed to come out, we get a call, saying they can’t come out and work on that unit because it’s raining. Oooookayyyy….. I guess I hadn’t thought about that being a deterrent. But one shouldn’t combine electricity with water, so that made sense.

Frechin said if the weather cleared up later that afternoon, they’d try to make it out. If not, they’d be by by 9 AM tomorrow (Saturday) morning.

OK, so the weather clears up that afternoon and no phone call.

I decided not to stick around and wait on Saturday. I had a strong feeling that they’d just be late for that appointment or would cancel it.

Sure enough, when we got home later that afternoon, there was a message on our machine. Frechin had called us at 10 AM.

We decided not to bother to reschedule.

Instead, I emailed my neighbors and asked for a recommendation. One neighbor said we should try “McIntosh Heating and Cooling”.

I called them yesterday (Tuesday) and arranged for two visits:

1) Have a technician come out and fix the condenser.
2) Have somebody come out to discuss long-term fixes to our 2nd floor cooling problems and give us an estimate.

By 2:30 PM, Roger from McIntosh Heating and Cooling came out to handle #2. I should mention that he had called me at about 10 AM to nail down this appointment time. I showed him the house and we discussed options.

Now, he had pointed out to me that last year, when Frechin installed our new furnace, they failed to offer us one with a variable speed fan. Roger said such a fan would have been quite helpful in providing extra cooling for the second floor.

After a bit more discussion, Roger recommended we install a second AC unit in the attic and put the new condenser unit out on the roof of our sun-porch. ( I’m not too thrilled about the idea of it sitting there… but I don’t THINK anybody’d be able to really see it from the yard. I’ll have to check on that.) Like I’d expected, Roger talked about running ductwork along the attic walls and opening vents downard into the second floor and also into the attic itself. They could even install a small heating element into the system, just in case we ever needed a bit of heat on the third floor itself (someday when we get enough money to finish it off).

Knowing that our current AC’s condenser unit was on the fritz, he drew up an estimate that also included the cost of a new primary condenser.

The whole thing, with a 12 seer condenser, the heating element, and ductwork, would run us just under $8000.

Roger gave us advice on how to provide more cooling to the second floor in the meanwhile, including closing up some of the first floor vents. I was surprised that he didn’t discuss zoned cooling, but then again I didn’t ask him about it either… which is my fault. But then, in these kinds of situations, I like to see if a business goes directly for the most expensive option… or whether they discuss alternatives.

Roger did discuss some alternatives, just not zoned cooling. I made a mental note to discuss this option / research this option further online.

Roger left and about 30 minutes later, the technician from McIntosh arrived to work on our condenser. Note that I had received about a 1.5 hour “warning” on his impending arrival by the phone dispatcher at McIntosh. I liked that. That helped me adjust my schedule today to make sure I was home when he’d be arriving.

The tech quickly determined that the motor on the condenser had siezed up. He managed to free it, but it was still burned out. So, for $200 plus labor, we had him replace the motor. (Our only other alternatives would have been $1400 for a 10 seer condenser or $2200 for a 12 seer one. Ouch! We decided to gamble on this solution… hoping the unit makes it through the year, at least, before we REALLY have to replace it.)

So, the last few days have been a mixed blessing in terms of solving our AC problems.

Like I said, I think I’m going to ask around some more and maybe have another company or two come out next week before I make my final decision.

GUTTERING NOTES
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One other thing of note: I called Brad Sellmeyer on Friday. He’s the gentleman who replaced our roof last year.

I told him I wanted to get an estimate on replacing all of our gutters on both the house and the garage… AND on putting in that missing facia board on the back of the sun porch, something he discovered last year and recommended to us that we get fixed ASAP.

Well, it must be an extremely busy time of year for roofers, because we’re having a hard time scheduling his visit. Actually, Brad apparently has asked his carpenter to come out and do the estimate, which apparently requires that I be home at the time. And he couldn’t possibly make it until tomorrow or Friday, but I’m on-shift today through Sunday.

So, it looks like next Monday morning, he’ll be coming out to give me that estimate.

Ah, home ownership! What fun!

My wife has been talking for weeks now of doing a complete kitchen make-over! I’m not looking forward to that project. ( sigh )