wordsworth

George called on “air freezing…think there’s a Freon leak.” Because of what happened at Danny’s, I went over and checked the coils…a sheet of ice covered them…told George I would be by Tuesday (Ellen had band practice) to clean them. I went on line and looked up air conditioner freezing…I knew how we cleaned the coils…this article mentioned a coil cleaner so I went to Home Depot and got it…found the brushes and went to George’s armed and ready.

Followed the directions for the coil cleaning…ended up using a toothbrush to get off the gunk…and they were dirty…brushed all with water and went home happy with my work.

George left a message saying it froze up again.

On Wednesday, I called the FL Barter and got the name of 2 companies on the Barter…both fairly new to the Barter. Called DC/AC – Brent Krueger – set up a time for him to come by Friday morning (I was off work that day…George was home, too).

Brent came by close to the time he said he would…around 10 am. He looked at the coils and immediately thought they were the problem…some were beat up and bent down…so his diagnosis was that the air couldn’t flow over them properly. I asked him to check for Freon leaks…we went out to the compressor…he put a gadget on and said there were no leaks – George is a witness to this. I asked for options: 1) Clean the coils ($850); 2) Replace the air handler ($400 barter/labor $1,100 new unit); 3) Replace everything and get a rebate from the government ($3,500). So, based on that info, no freon leak – cleaning coils may not do the trick…or if it did only for a little while, and the fact that the air handler was 11+ years old…getting to end of life…and George said he would pitch in $500 (which I have since applied to his rent for September) I decided that a new air handler was needed.

Brent’s guys came back that afternoon and installed it; changed the filter set up and added an over flow auto-cut-off valve.

A few days later, George called: “Air conditioner freezing up again.” Called Brent…he came back and looked at the compressor again and said that because it had been working too hard before, it was laboring now…he did something/vacuum with the Freon…said it could work for another week…a year…just not sure…he also said he had a compressor back in the shop that he could give me a good price on. RED FLAG. Thanks…bye-bye.

Tracked down number for Mr. Tim (who I did try to call earlier in this…left two messages at apparently a wrong number). Mr. Tim came by the very next day…within 20 minutes, he had adjusted the air handler draw speed from low to high…and found a Freon leak on the compressor coil. He said I got sold an air handler I didn’t need and to call back DC/AC and ask them to come out and fix the Freon leak – no charge. I did this while he was here. I told Brent about the air handler setting…about the Freon leak and asked when he could come by to fix it at no charge…at this point Mr. Tim got on the phone with him and told him exactly where the leak was…then I got back on … his response was that it wasn’t “his fault – in regards to the Freon leak – and he would charge me to come out and fix it. At this point I reminded him that a happy customer was his top priority and told him I was not a happy customer…said thanks but no thanks and hung up. Mr. Tim did the work – 2 hours and $150.00 later, the leak was fixed; Freon replaced and there hasn’t been a problem since. Mr. Tim did let me know that the price for the air handler was fair.

So, small claims court?