July 9th, 2002 -- A/C
and home warrantees - See the pictures and hear of yet another round
of deception and fraud...
July 11th - A postscript to the AC fun page
The home warrantee
service guy came out to look at our AC situation. We all thought it to
be a pretty simple case of lack of freon. So, after a cursory look, the
repair guy (Bob) goes out to get a few gauges and a tank of freon. He
attempts to fill the units with no luck. Hmm. After a bit of analysis of
the low and high pressure lines, he says "These compressors were
not installed right - who installed them? An idiot?" Well, I
proceeded to tell him of our friend Russ and that most everything we
have encountered in this old house has been installed improperly or
incompletely at best. As it turns out, there is air in the lines which
needs to be bled from the lines and new freon pumped in - each unit will
take about 2.5 hrs of work. The estimate is $553.00. Good thing we've
got the home warrantee, eh? Thanks Russ.
As for the fraudulent part, Russ disclosed the 'fact' that the
control wires had never been hooked up prior to selling. Additionally,
he stated to me on two occasions in a more vague fashion that the
control wires 'weren't working'. After pressing him on whether or not
the AC units even worked, he said that at some point they
"bypassed" the control circuit and told the compressors to
turn on manually. When the units were operated manually, "they
worked fine." I didn't think to ask what "fine" meant.
Yea, the fan spins and the compressor motor functions "fine."
Lastly, the oddball item in one of the compressors should have been a
giveaway to me. Inside one of the compressors, the two wires to be
hooked up were not just bare wire as they would be when new, but instead
they had wire nuts on them. When I removed the wire nuts, I found the
wires themselves to be all in a rats-nest just as you would expect for
wires which have already been wire-nutted to other wires. The control
wires were not exposed but were cut off 'cleanly' inside the control box
area. So, they way it went was -- tried to hookup the control wires,
found out that there was no cold air, unhooked the control wires and
clipped things off to look like it had never been attempted. Russ knew
what he had here...
July 14th - Water
games - Kitchen, bath and under house main.
July 16th - Sears AC home repair guy shows up to fix the AC and get
it running properly. It was supposed to be a bleeding-of-air and
refill-of-freon job. As it turns out, both compressors are broken and
non-functional. Now the repair is over $1500.00 at last estimate. The
home warrantee people are not happy and haven't approved of the repair
yet. Ugh. Glad it's not hot outside now. This could be a while before
this gets resolved. The repair guy says it is nearly impossible to
believe that the previous owner didn't know that the compressors were
bad - yea, I believe that.
Back to the Wolffpit home
Thanks for coming to visit The Wolffpit.
Got questions or want to share a pit-story via email? Email me -- I'm
Bob.