Kind of in passing, I asked how the new air-conditioning was working. As we texted, Tam was wondering through the house and, finding her cat on my bed, she'd sat down and petted her. The cat was curled up tight and almost shivering--
Which was when it dawned on Tam that she was feeling pretty chilly herself. And that she'd never noticed the air conditioning cycling off since the new installation was done and the techs had left, five hours earlier.
While texting, she tried all the usual things -- turn the the thermostat up and wait, then when that did nothing over the course of several minutes, flip the switch from "Cool" to "Off" -- and yet the fan played on, still pushing cold air.
I called the HVAC company and got the after-hours robot. I've used it before and they are usually quick to respond; I left a detailed message and within five minutes, the on-call service tech called back, asked the usual questions, and decided he was headed my way, pronto.
He arrived a few minutes after I got home, looked over the work, tried a few things at the thermostat, and said, "Looks like you're getting a new thermostat. I don't know why we don't just routinely put a new one in on jobs like this. They tend to fail."* He proceeded to install a nice new thermostat, checked that it was working, remarked, "This is why we have that warranty," and left without any paperwork at all.
So that was an interesting coda to the air-conditioning adventure. Cats and resident bloggers are all comfortable now.
* * *
My profound thanks to everyone who has hit Tam's Tip Jar to help out with this unexpected expense! We're all happier when she can be maintained at the proper operating temperature.________________________________________
* Why? I didn't ask, figuring I had probably pulled him away from dinner and questions would only slow him down, but in our case, the thermostat was likely as old as the air-conditioner and got dinked with quite a lot yesterday when the installers checked their work. Tam says she could feel the bimetallic element klonk over, but the contacts may have been stuck. There was at least one broken wire and by the "make it work and go home" approach to service work, what you do is reterminate the wiring, stick on a new thermostat and count the problem solved. At least that's how I would have done it.
6 comments:
"Contacts stuck'. One more reason to mourn the passing of the mercury switch...
You could SEE it work. As long is you didn't ask it to pass too much power nor put up with mechanical moronity, they never went bad.
But it's for the children or something...
Oh, you can fry a mercury switch, too -- it just takes a lot more work.
The old mechanical thermostats have an anticipator mechanism that wears out after a couple decades.
Hey, I have a suggestion:
You may be eligible for some tax credits since you replaced the AC with a new one. Also your Power company may give you some $$ as well.
Might be worth looking into, if you haven't already.
B
With the all electronic versions, plan on replacing them every few years, no matter how much you spent on it. Mercury ones still working after 30 years. Mechanical versions not as long, maybe 15 years.
If tempted to buy a spare electronic one, don't bother. I'm seeing small home electronic items going bad while still in the box. Somewhere between new and 10 years something degrades, apparently. All China made, but I don't know if that is connected.
Oh, and you will NOT find the same model available two years later.
Re electronics failing prematurely: we've had three "10 year" smoke detectors in five years. When my former apartment complex installed 300 "10 year" smoke detectors, the maintenance guys had to come through within six months and replace all of them as the failure rate was HUUGE.
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