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Grand Theft Autobot posted:They didn't mention anything about wall repairs. I'll ask. If they're just banging them through exterior walls there won't likely be any drywall repair necessary. Whether this is a look you want or not is certainly up to you.
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Jun 6, 2019 17:34
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Another popular retrofit in older homes (and I'm talking about 300 year old homes around here) are HVLP systems.
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Jun 6, 2019 19:51
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MRC48B posted:That it ran for years with unclean coils, filter, marginal run capacitor. The 800 you save is not really worth the risk, unless you're flipping this property soon. He won't be "saving" $800. New compressors come pre-charged (which may or may not be sufficient charge weight depending on the line set length). R-22 ain't cheap.
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Jun 9, 2019 19:44
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Mr.Popadopolis posted:I still have like 28 pounds in my bottle of R22 I bought to recharge the system the first time, not sure what to do with it when I replace this system. Uhhhhh....you put in on eBay for $300+ to pay for some of this.
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Jun 9, 2019 21:16
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brugroffil posted:Vents are open throughout the house, the air blowing into her room feels nice and cold. Have you tried closing (some or entirely) vents on the first floor/other bedrooms to attempt to balance the airflow better? Depending on your duct layout there are also booster fans that can be put in to get more air upstairs. But yes, without zoning and/or a separate upstairs system this is likely to always be at least somewhat of a problem. I'm going to guess with 80s construction you have insufficient and/or one centrally located return downstairs.
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Jul 13, 2019 18:56
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TraderStav posted:Good afternoon goons! My 3 year old A/C unit stopped blowing cold air the other day so I had a tech come out to take a look at it from the company that installed it. He found that there was some blockage around the outside unit from not cleaning it this year, but that wasn't the culprit that caused all of the freon to be gone. He found a leak that was covered under the 10 year parts warranty but said that I will have to pay for the seven pounds of refrigerant they put in to the tune of ~$700-800. I'd be pretty fuming too. Pull out those warranty docs from both the manufacturer and anything you got from the installer. Also, I'm assuming this is an R410A system based on age. While prices have admittedly increased recently, a 25lb jug is going for about $110. https://www.refrigerantguys.com/R410A-25lb-genetron-freon-refrigerant-p/111016.htm $700-800 is a huge ripoff, especially during the course of a warranty service call.
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Aug 29, 2019 18:25
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TraderStav posted:They classify the refrigerant as Labor, In that case I bet you have a parts only warranty - that's why I said to check the docs you have) from the manufacturer AND them. Sounds like they're just burying everything on one line item. Warranty on that unit is in fact parts only. So unless you have a labor warranty from the installer.......
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Aug 29, 2019 19:02
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TraderStav posted:Correction: the coil on the furnace went, not the compressor. Which has absolutely nothing to do with that codenser being filthy. And it is. You need to clean that poo poo if you have stuff near it that gets sucked in. MRC48B posted:All it takes to avoid that is shutting off the breaker to the unit, and a garden hose. gently caress the breaker, and pull out the pressure washer. Blow that poo poo out through the top and let the fan spin as it will. If that's not good enough then yeah, breaker. And with cottonwood that seems to be that close....it may be of a level where you need to kill the unit and actually take off the fan grate so you can get down in there and blast it out. But this has nothing to do with the failure and warranty claim.
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Aug 30, 2019 00:25
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MRC48B posted:Please don't tell people to use a pressure washer on the condenser. They will do it wrong and gently caress up the fins. The replacement crew at my company has enough work already, thanks. You are entirely correct and I'm sorry for not being clear about that. Pressure washers can F up even your brand new wood deck if you do it wrong so I was assuming knowledge and technique that I shouldn't have. TraderStav posted:Right, the tech said I need 7 pounds. I’ll use the 25 gallon tank for $110 that motronic posted as a ballpark price. I get that they won’t price it out at the marginal cost of good sold. They need to factor in all sorts of fixed costs (storage, transport, facilities for proper handling, regulation and compliance costs, etc.) I think 4X is not an egregious markup and would settle for that rather than the 25x originally quoted. What I posted was a 25 POUND tank, not gallon. Liquid R410A actually weighs more than water at 8.9 lbs/gal
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Aug 30, 2019 02:02
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ntan1 posted:I have a question for you all. How many heads? You need to run two copper lines and a power cable to each head. You also need to run a condensate drain from each head. A lot of this, including mounting the outdoor unit and running power to it, is definitely "qualified handyman" territory. Doing a unit startup is not. Could you get your guy to do all of that other labor and have an HVAC company come into pressure test, startup, and adjust the refrigerant charge? Should be a while lot cheaper.
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Sep 2, 2019 19:37
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ntan1 posted:They can do the pressure test as well, just need to confirm if they have done refrigerant before (I know for a fact they have installed/mounted ductless before). Then the only real issue is making sure they know how to purge the lines and adjust pressures. Mini splits are pre-charged for a specific line set length. If you are over or under it needs to be corrected. To be fair, people are installing those things without even purging lines or anything and they (mostly) work. You're certainly not going to be getting the best efficiency or longevity out of them, but they're pretty forgiving. Especially the inverter models.
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Sep 2, 2019 19:57
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ntan1 posted:Thanks! That's a "we don't want your business" quote. HVAC installers in the bay area get to pick and choose jobs.
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Sep 2, 2019 22:21
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Mr. Powers posted:HVAC adjacent: are digital oil tank meters something that can reasonably self installed or do I need to have an oil company install it? Are you talking about the kind that replaces the tank floater? If so, they're pretty easy - you just need a pipe wrench. But I'm curious as to which one you're going with. The only ones I've found are "cloud based" and from small companies that I don't trust to remain in business, which means your $300 gauge becomes entirely useless.
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Sep 16, 2019 16:25
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angryrobots posted:He "thinks" the compressor wasn't on? And he had gauges on it? Yeah, the combination of thinking it's over-charged, electrocuting himself, using "beer can cold" as a diagnostic tool instead of an actual thermometer/thermocouple and now not knowing if the coil is frozen or not (again, there is a well known temperature at which water freezes - it's not a mystery).......are you sure this is an actual AC guy or it is just some handyman?
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Sep 17, 2019 20:04
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Qwijib0 posted:If you're in a situation where a window unit won't work, sell it and buy a
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Sep 18, 2019 15:07
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SpartanIvy posted:I have entertained the mini split idea but I do not like the mini split price. I get that, but you can either have this work well or you can have it look like poo poo, be annoyingly loud and perform poorly. Those are really the only options.
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Sep 18, 2019 15:21
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davebo posted:Not to interject my enviro-friendly tree-hugging into the thread but I figured this is worth asking. Do you spend all that much time in the garage? Does it really need to be air conditioned 24/7, or is a lot of the discomfort due to humidity that might be better served by just a dehumidifier and a fan or two pointed at where you tend to be working in it? This is a good point. I had AC in my last barn/workshop and never used it. I do use the hell out of the shop fan though. While I'll probably install AC in the new one for particularly nasty days where I'm working in there for long periods of time, it too will probably not get used all the much.
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Sep 21, 2019 18:30
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Pollyanna posted:
Yeah, I remember this post. And with the picture I'm now gonna go with "there are no filters on that system and you have intake air coming from some nasty rear end dirty neighbors" as another potential problem. Is there a return in your unit? Does it have a filter or a spot for one? They could be per return and/or central. Really depends on the system.
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Nov 9, 2019 22:30
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Pollyanna posted:Should I harangue my landlords into fixing it? Regardless of the issue......YES. This is the benefit of renting.
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Nov 10, 2019 03:36
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I think I mentioned the last time around that you can TRY filters on the supply grates (it's a thing you can find at a big box store...potentially in the size you need) but you may cut your airflow to the point where you aren't getting the heat you want.
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Nov 10, 2019 21:54
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I mean.....you can ask for whatever you want. But rather than trying to ask for a specific solution I'd keep it to a specific OUTCOME (I want clean air from the heater in my apartment).
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Nov 10, 2019 22:26
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The real answer here is: move.
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Nov 13, 2019 04:54
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Alarbus posted:Iirc, Pollyanna is in NYC and the rent is If this is the real story.....then you decide to either move or deal with it. If the rent is extremely favorable in any desirable area of NYC they are rent controlled and the property owner is bringing their own dryer lint to inject into this heating unit in order to drive out rent controlled tenants. And that's the least of what they will do.
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Nov 13, 2019 06:52
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Pollyanna posted:I have no idea what that switch does. Maybe it turns the heater off, or maybe I’ll die. I don’t wanna loving touch that thing and I don’t wanna touch the heater without being 100% sure I’ve cut the power. It turns the unit off - standard disconnect on one of those. Pollyanna posted:I suspect there are no filters, because it doesn’t come with any according to the poor neglected manual covered in rat(?) poo poo next to it. Get pics around the unit. Probably down low there should be a trunk for the return. That's a typical location for a filter. If there isn't one, it's probably partially open and dragging poo poo up from the basement. You can measure to figure out what size filter you need and likely fix the bulk of those problems for about $2. Although you'll probably want to swap the filter every few days/weeks as it catches all the poo poo currently in the ducts. Good luck. And no, this isn't what homeownership looks like unless you buy a place like this or let your house go to poo poo.
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Nov 13, 2019 18:04
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SpartanIvy posted:That's actually a good unit and not a bottom of the barrel. I'm impressed! Eh....that's still a $300 Home Depot special. It just looks like a better one. But absolutely anything is better than the last one so whatever.
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Nov 15, 2019 01:10
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Mr. Powers posted:Fun fact: some heating system need fuel and stop working if you run out. I almost got a week out of the oil the previous owner left me. I just had a friend call out the oil company because he was away and his wife wasn't getting heat/she hit the reset and it only ran for 20 seconds. His oil supplier forgot to mark that his boiler runs all summer for hot water so their automatic delivery schedule was wrong and they ran out of oil.
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Nov 16, 2019 17:37
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B-Nasty posted:If you don't know how, now's the time to learn how to purge the oil line of air to get the furnace restarted safely. If it ran dry, you should probably also change the filter at the tank which is now probably covered in the sludge that is typically at the bottom of the tank. Good points. If it's a 2 line system you can just hit the reset button (might take a few rounds) and it will prime on its own. But I'd suggest not changing the filter until a day or so after the tank gets filled again - an empty/near empty tank getting filled stirs up a lot of crap that gonna end up in your new filter.
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Nov 16, 2019 18:29
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Mr. Powers posted:I mean, I saw the bleeding process and that's pretty straight forward, but I have no idea if there are extra steps if you actually get air in the lines. For a single line system, nope. If you saw it that's it. Crack the bleeder, make sure it's going somewhere other than you floor (I have a short piece of hose and coffee can + lid) hit the reset button and close the bleeder once you have a solid stream with no bubble coming out. It should stay lit then. If it doesn't give it another shot just like that and you should be good to go.
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Nov 16, 2019 19:54
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FogHelmut posted:Why is my air conditioning significantly louder than my heater? It all goes through the same air handler. Explain where it's louder. What fuel is your heater? Where is it in relation to your living space? Also set your thermostat to fan only if you have that and tell us what it sounds like.
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Nov 28, 2019 07:10
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It's almost certainly the start/run cap.
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Dec 15, 2019 18:01
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angryrobots posted:I don't think those variable speed ECM units have caps? Ooooofff...didn't realize it was variable. Sorry Rhyno. That one's gonna hurt right in your wallet.
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Dec 15, 2019 18:53
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Gaddmn that sucks dude. But probably the right move.
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Dec 16, 2019 19:22
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Yeah, that's exactly what I just did with a (turned out to be 13 years old) dishwasher. Repairable? Yes. Worth repairing? Probably not, because I'm sure I'd be right back in the in the next week to few months to replace the next 13 year old thing that lest the smoke out.
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Dec 16, 2019 19:36
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That appears to be a single speed fan, so maybe start with checking the stat/run cap. e: also, turn the furnace off and see if the fan spins free/doesn't grind when moving it by hand.
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Jan 8, 2020 21:12
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Phy posted:It's a 2-speed inducer according to Carrier's site, the blower is fixed-speed though. But will check that 2nd part tonight. Wait, so the noise is as the draft inducer fan turns on, not the blower?
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Jan 8, 2020 21:35
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corgski posted:My fiance and I are looking at buying a house with a hot water system with a gas-fired boiler as its primary source of heat. About half of the radiators are original to the house (c. 1930 according to county records,) the other half have been replaced with low profile baseboard units. What do I need to know about maintaining a system like this and is there anything I should ask the inspector to look at specifically? Auto fill valve? Auto fill valve in on position? Properly installed expansion tank on heat loop? Drain valve in working condition? Pump in working condition? Pump installed in a manner it can be serviced? (i.e. flat flanges so it can be taken out of the system without soldering) System quiet (i.e. properly bled) when operated? I mean, there's more. And any inspector you hire shouldn't need a list to figure it out.
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Jan 19, 2020 16:38
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Pollyanna posted:Where the hell does the filter go for this furnace!? If it's not at the furnace it's typically in an openable return air grate in the living space.
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Feb 13, 2020 19:13
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Well, there's the filter on your poorly installed unit. Also remove the pile of dirt. And the filter needs to be changed like.....a LOT for a long time until all that poo poo is gone.
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Feb 14, 2020 01:47
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Pollyanna posted:You see a filter? Maybe it's hard to see in the pics, but isn't that a crusty wall on the bottom of the unit to the right of all of the pile of poo poo? If not I guess I need to zoom in. But in any case, that's a poo poo show.
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Feb 14, 2020 02:09
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Pollyanna posted:Crusty wall? No, I think what you’re looking at is the metal box where the return ducts converge. Yikes....so..... MRC48B posted:Sorry, you got a landlord handyman special. You need to talk to the person who owns this building and this equipment.
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Feb 14, 2020 02:16
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