We called him out here because there's been an intermittent banging sound from the ducts. The lying machine said it might be our Too Thick Filter (seems like it should be illegal for like every hvac filter ever made to be too much for residential hvac despite being marketed for such, but hey) but even with a thin ass "is this even a filter" filter it was still doing it
Well tl;dr our ductwork is a hack job that looks like it was installed by a total amateur. There's all these spots with circular plates screwed into the ducts and they're not even sealed with tape or anything. And i guess the return duct is just too small so it's just constantly building up this huge negative pressure.
So that's why our humidity is fucked, it's just constantly sucking in air from the crawl space
We haven't seen a real quote yet but he's basically like "it'll probably be around 16000 dollars" because the A/C unit is like 10 years old so if we're replacing the ducts we might as well replace everything. That's a lot of money
I guess we don't need to do anything TODAY because it still WORKS but it's basically a ticking time bomb that will totally wipe out all of my partner's savings. It could be worse because we could just not have savings to pay for anything but it still fucking sucks and is very stressful especially when I still need to get a new car at some point (because we have one working vehicle)
It really feels like life is a constant stream of go fuck yourself sometimes
P.s. he replaced the P trap but I'm really confused because he says it's not draining at all and i literally saw it draining before
I'm sure a happy HVAC salesman will go over such details with you (very gleefully), but it's probable that the company has a deal with some bank that will let you establish a line of credit (it's effectively just a credit card) and offer you like "0% interest if paid in 36 months" or perhaps 48 months. Something like that. Of course there's the usual caveats of "if you don't pay it in that 36 month period they shove the pending interest directly up your ass at like 17%." It's great if you know you will be able to pay it under the time limit.
I don't know if they already discussed this or not, and there's other ways to solve such issues of course, but just thought I'd throw it out there. I know many people are "credit-averse" or whatever, but it's just sort of the way things are and 🤷♂️ might as well use the tools if they're lying about.
I had to get a new system ~4 years ago too. If that $16K quote includes "everything" that's probably not a bad figure. I didn't need new ductwork. I got a new A/C unit and the furnace installed (natural gas lines are run in my city. I didn't know about heat pumps either until right after I got it installed. Bit of a forced rush decision since my unit was lifeless and it was already late May) for I think like $14K though I can't remember exactly. It was a bit more expensive than it could've been because I purposely got a more expensive unit that runs pretty much silently. Compared to the older units, 10+ years or so, that you can hear the hard kick of the compressor and then the outdoor unit's fan running... this one is totally silent and way more efficient. I think the least expensive option was like $9K. If I add ductwork and adjust for 4 years of pretty bad inflation I guess that comes out to about the same.
I remember being in your situation though and I dread the thought of it again. My sympathies on that front