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I moved to San Antonio awhile back to work at a small AC company. At first I thought my boss was a walking stereotype, Texan/republican/racist. Always saying things like "Why pay for a contractor to do something right when you can get Julio to do it cheaper?" We run into lots of systems that are horribly rigged together so he says this a lot. One of our clients decided last year he was going to get a new roof on his house and changed from shingles to clay tiles. He got a few bids from contractors and in the end had his maids nephew and a few friends do it for $250 cheaper. The roof was done in the fall and this past spring he called us out to clean and service his AC units. From the outside his roof looked ok, but something was a little off and I couldn't quite place my finger on it. After finishing with the first 2 units I climb into the attic to look at the last one. After a few moments of staring at his sagging roof it dawns on me why I thought the roof looked funny from the outside. Aside from it sagging there were no vent pipes sticking up through it. For the entire winter he was running his heat and venting straight into his attic. The jackasses that did the new roof decided cutting circles in clay tiles was too hard and just ignored it. Still not sure how he and his wife didn't die. My boss has been doing this job for 30 years, I guess running into this type of situation over and over again leads to things like his favorite saying. I got called out to a house a few months ago because the AC was dripping water through a ceiling. First thing I do when I get there is shut off the unit. Why the hell would you keep running it if it is making water leak through your ceiling? Retards. That's not the purpose of the story, though, so moving forward I check the overflow line that came out over the back door and it wasn't dripping any water. I go out to my van to get my nitrogen tank and crawl into the attic to blow out the drain lines when I see the overflow pan is spilling water over the edges, clearly the homeowners were right in thinking the AC was the problem. I blow out the main line first, then I go to blow out the overflow line and it just sprays water back at me. I follow the pvc from the overflow pan and it goes for about 10 feet and then was capped off. Whoever installed the unit while the house was being built put half an overflow line, then stuck a 3 foot piece of pvc with an elbow out the wall over the backdoor to make it look like there was a complete drain line. Also they didn't put in an overflow switch which would have stopped the water spilling over to begin with. For those that don't know what an overflow switch is, it is a little device that will shut your AC off if the water level rises up too high due to blockages in your drain line. These are cheap and they are a smart thing to have. If your air handler is in the attic it is pretty much a must have. This next one has nothing to do with the topic, I just feel like telling a quick story. One guy called us out this past July because his unit was pushing a horrible smell throughout his house. I go into the attic to check things out and immediately start dry heaving from the stink. There was a dead squirrel up there. I don't think we saw a day below 100 degrees for all of July, so you can imagine how hot the attic was and how much that made the smell worse. gently caress attics and people who think they are a good place to stick an air conditioner.
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Sep 10, 2011 23:06
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 22:16 |
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