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
For anything like this you need to be getting quotes from multiple people. This person is trying to upsell you more than help you.
Or giving a "fuck off" quote to basically make it worth their while.
yeah we're definitely doing that. They ended up quoting 17k, which might be alright since someone else said they got their AC/furnace put in for 14k with no ductwork.
I liked the guy talking to him but i will say this, he replaced the P trap with another incorrect P trap (but Idk if my partner told him it needs a 5" drop and a 3" rise on the outlet side, I thought they did but I wasn't there for that). But also he did that for free so idk
Yes a new AC should cost that much but it sounds like you need someone who is willing to just service the old one and fix the ducts which should be enough and cost considerably less
Yeah that might be the case. It's just kinda hard to tell when I have no professional experience with HVAC stuff. It's kind of the same situation as with my car, where something chewed through the harness for the O2 sensor and the mechanic said I needed to take it to the dealership, it's like, it might be affordable to fix but what if it's old enough that something else will go wrong and we're just dumping money when it'd make more financial sense to just replace it? But I know that fear of that exact thing is used to pressure people into sales.
I think for now we're just going to shop for quotes and see other others say, and yeah, maybe we can just get the return duct fixed and then play wait and see with the actual HVAC system
Yeah that's a tough situation. Ideally you can find someone trustworthy who knows a good HVAC person or just get enough quotes to start to get an idea of how it is. Good luck
For real. My folks recently had to get some plumbing work done. First company called quoted them at 30 grand. The next 4 quoted them for like 12.
The other day I had to get a garbage disposal fixed, everyone was trying to sell me a new one for 800-1200 and one guy fixed it instantly and tried to do it for free since it was an easy fix. Finding the right person can be a huge difference