A/C

On the afternoon of the 28th of June in the middle of the afternoon our home A/C just quit. The outside condenser fan was still spinning, but the blower motor was as quiet as a church mouse. I checked for tripped breakers and found none. I flipped the furnace breaker on then off with not luck. On the afternoon of the 3rd of August it was finally repaired.

	June 28	June 29	June 30	July 1	July 2	July 3
	103°	100°	94°	93°	94°	96°
July 4	July 5	July 6	July 7	July 8	July 9	July 10
91°	94°	96°	96°	91°	98°	99°
July 11	July 12	July 13	July 14	July 15	July 16	July 17
96°	96°	94°	93°	90°	86°	90°
July 18	July 19	July 20	July 21	July 22	July 23	July 24
94°	92°	91°	86°	89°	91°	92°
July 25	July 26	July 27	July 28	July 29	July 30	July 31
95°	94°	70°	88°	95°	86°	87°
August 1	August 2	August 3
91°	93°	92°

I searched the net for some local heating and air conditioning contractors with some decent ratings, there were only a couple that stood out. I called Contractor #1 and was told they were were scheduling 2 weeks out, I said thanks, but no thanks. Second place said they could be here in a week, I took it.

Contractor #2 arrived and troubleshot it down to a bad controller board. Right there on the back of the board was a large blackened spot. They had to order one and said it would take a week for the new one to arrive. Eight days later the same tech arrived with the new board. After he installed it and came upstairs to turn the unit back on the result was the same as when it quit in the first place, no blower running. I followed him back downstairs and before we even got to the furnace we could smell toasted electronics. Yep, the board was burnt in the same spot.

He called his boss and was talked through finding out what was causing the problem. Turns out that the blower motor was shorted to ground and all that current made it’s way right through that spot on the control board. The tech left us with what his boss told him, they weren’t sure whether they could warranty the board, they would have to eat the cost or it would be on us. We were going to need to have a new board and a motor to get back up and running. We should get a call back from the boss on what was what in a few days.

After a week of radio silence I decided to call them up. No one answered the phone and the lead in to leaving a message didn’t sound promising. It went a little like, “Due to a lack of technicians we will only be servicing our existing customers and will no longer be taking new customers. If you are an existing customer leave your name and phone number and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.” When we hadn’t heard back by the following day I called again and left name and number. I then took a chance and called the tech direct (I had his number because he called me before showing up the first time.) He didn’t return my call.

The next day, we tried a second tack, Donna emailed their contact number with our displeasure at the lack of communications. Within the hour the tech called us back. His sole statement was that the boss is handling it and we should hear back from him in a day or two. The next day I called the main number again and left one more message, “Sorry about your technician troubles, but thanks for nothing, we are going to go with another contractor. Don’t contact us again.”

So, I called back contractor #1 and got on their 2 week waiting list. Sure enough 2 weeks to the date, a technician arrives outside our door. I gave him the rundown on what had transpired so far and he said, I’ll look into everything to make sure the original diagnosis from Contractor #2 was correct. After about 45 minutes he told us that sure enough that was our problem. He thought that for sure we could warranty out the burnt board and all we would need is a new blower motor.

Four days later he was back with a new board and motor. They did get the board under warranty, so all it would cost us was the service call fee, the motor and labor for the installation.

A little over five weeks later and five hundred dollars poorer, we are once again enjoying a cool house.