Oh, this winter, with its persistent sub-normal temps! While this season of chill and dark still rages, the misery of a failing HVAC system finally reached its concluding chapter. With no heat at all downstairs during Presidents’ Day week, the main hallway hit a low of 52°F overnight on Tuesday; above you can see the condensation on the inside of the kitchen windows from the previous Saturday morning.
I was at last able to accept that no other course of action but a full replacement of the HVAC system was available to me. The extended period of time that it has been undependable, with the added expense of regular service calls and a handful of replaced blower motors, compounded on top of all the moments of angst and worry that it would be in failing mode for an event or gathering or special occasion, or when friends might be here to stay: it was a contract that had to be signed.
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| Out with the old... |
With the good news that an appointment opened up a couple of days earlier than scheduled, the install team from Webb Heating & Air Conditioning was at the house bright and early last Tuesday morning. It was an all-day job, of course, and they were not finished until well into dinnertime. A new hybrid furnace and air handler, a new heat pump outside, a couple of snazzy smart new thermostats, plus two new carbon monoxide detectors outside the bedrooms: consider the Roediger House upgraded now!
That evening, the kitchen zone rebounded quickly and was once more comfortable. I was so glad to be back to my joyful labors in that happy place. The front of the house, and the original old drafty rooms, took longer...but it too is once more habitable.
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| ...in with the new! |
Here is what I cannot reconcile, though (and this is where you can stop reading if you’ve even come this far; I’m going to vent a bit...and yes: that’s an intentional pun):
The ongoing succession of problems that have necessitated call after call to the HVAC techs has resulted in a trip charge each time (wasn’t that charge originally imposed because of high gas prices, which are no longer so high?), plus whatever additional labor or parts go along with it. Even though the multiple blower motors blowing out was an issue well before the system had that much age on it, Webb Heating & Air Conditioning never really diagnosed its source and therefore never determined a remedy. I did what they asked, for instance, and had electricians evaluate it for power spikes; we recently installed a surge protector as well.
I repeatedly paid them to come and get the heat or A/C working again without the issue ever being resolved. The last occasion, the tech didn’t even test both zones...I came home to find he pronounced the system working without ever turning on the kitchen zone. Of course, it didn’t work. But I sure got a bill for $152. I’m glad my long-stored DēLonghi space heater could be cleaned up from 15 years of cellar dust and that it was up to the job of warming the master bathroom (and then even the huge kitchen space!).
Over these last couple of years, the entrenched verdict was that I can’t expect a system that old to be fixable and the problem could not be solved until I bought a new one. That’s the advice I was finally willing to take: that to have a dependable HVAC system, I would replace the old one. I acted on their advice and then chose from among their recommendations, because Webb had made clear that was the only dependable way to restore service.
The evening after installation, while the front zone labored in the old drafty part of the house to overcome the low 50s temps to get back up to the target of 67°F, the rear kitchen zone shot past its thermostat setting. The kitchen got up to 73°F and still heat was blowing through the registers.
So I sent a nice note to Webb indicating that this seemed to be a hindrance to considering the installation process finished and asked for them to come check it. “But the install did not involve anything to do with the zone dampers,” I was told, as if all the ductwork cutting and refitting could not possibly have had any effect at all on the components adjacent to the work zone.
(Cleaning up their workspace on the driveway where I park my cars was definitely a part of the install job they did not do.)
The instantaneous instinct to set up a revenue opportunity, that trumps the “service” part of HVAC service, is galling. It’s the height of irony for the people who keep charging me for doing nothing keep looking at me as if I’m demanding something for nothing. The right attitude would be: “Let’s look at it and see what the problem might be, and maybe it’ll be our responsibility or maybe it will be yours.” But no: before even examining the system, the folks from Webb made clear that it was impossible for the problem to be connected in any way to the installation that was supposed to be the only way to resolve the system’s problems.
Perhaps it is my own fault for sticking with a company that includes “gremlins” “wood sprites” amongst its shoulder-shrugging tech diagnoses. After all the times I have paid Webb to leave the problems in my system undiagnosed and unremediated, after replacing blower motor after blower motor before I could even get them to break one down to see if they could learn why I had that repeated issue, after these last few months when techs would come and restart the system and charge me to say: “We don’t know why it stopped working”...it seems to me that they might entertain that the installation of a whole new system in the cellar might have jiggled the zone damper portion enough to say: “We care about customer service and satisfaction enough to make this right.”
Or, perhaps Mr. Webb is another company magnate who thinks I have too much money, and he doesn’t have enough.
The rosier ending to the story is this: the install manager was dispatched the following day (ahead of our small snow event!) and he began with that same oppositional stance. But then he examined the zone damper, determined the actuator motor is failing, and replaced it without adding charges beyond the parts. Is this the first time a member of the Webb team acted with consideration for how they have regularly charged me full price while delivering substantially less than resolution? As a homeowner, I know that Webb is likely as good as I’ll be able to get, and I really have liked the guys who’ve been on the job here...but I’d like to not have to work so hard at helping the company be better than they are.
