So yesterday morning my house was in the low to mid 50s and the heat did not seem to be running. I futzed with the thermostat and it seemed to kick on and by the time I left it had gone up a few degrees.

A couple of hours later, A called and asked if I knew what was going on with the heat. It had crawled into the mid sixties. *sigh*

One of our neighbors, who we never met before but see sometimes when walking Garbo, has a truck with an HVAC company logo. So, not really knowing any other HVAC company I called them. He showed up around six and when he walked in he looked at Garbo and he was like ‘oh!’ as he recognized who we were, beyond someone who just lives up the block.

He starts to disassemble the unit, which he says is a good unit, but it was installed poorly. It is flush against the house with some flashing over the top. This makes access to the blower motor and coils very difficult. It is designed to be set back about a foot from the house and for the ducts to extend beyond the house and be covered in an extension that fits between the unit and the flashing. Of course… He commented that he frequently sees units that should last in excess of ten years needing replacement after seven because they were installed incorrectly.

He starts to measure the freon, and check the other pieces parts and then goes into the crawl space under the house. “Ah!” he says. I go under the deck an peer into the crawl space and I see it too. The flexi duct that the house duct work  to the back of the heat pump – well it isn’t. Its just lieing on the floor. And its brittle and the heat pump air out is too hot to re-connect it. He needs to leave it off over night (well for an hour or so, but its coming on 7 at this point…) and then he can do a patch connection and have his install team come out and look at repositioning and reconnecting the unit the way it should be.
The upshot… we spent at least a day and a half heating the crawl space and not the house, the heat plugs were on for a good percent of that time since the thermostat was calling for heat the whole time, and the duct work needs to be repaired. There goes that paycheck….