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
This would probably be a good idea before paying to replace everything. I'm gonna be real though I am not a crawlspace guy. Maybe if it was all clean and encapsulated.... but even though the HVAC guy said it's relatively nice down there i'm still like, no way. Maybe if my partner gets me a hazmat suit and i'm all taped up. I just think I'd get a spider in my clothes and panic and somehow die down there. Very reasonable fear
I think the metal line with the worrying amounts of rust is actually the gas line. It's a packaged gas unit so it has electric A/C and a natural gas furnace in the same unit. The PVC should be the main condensation drain line.
It was definitely sucking air through it. The HVAC guy didn't mention that though, that was from the google LLM telling me hopeful lies that the improper P trap could be causing the humidity increase we see when the A/C runs. I was really hoping it was that and not duct issues.
The P trap is still a source of confusion for me though because the HVAC guy said it wasn't draining AT ALL but I noticed a steady trickle (at about the same rate our 50pt dehumidifier produces) before the guy came out.
Also he replaced the P trap but as far as I can tell it still hasn't right, based on the installation manual. The image I sent you was the OLD drain. He said it actually wasn't a trap at all but something else, I forget what he called it though, a continuous drain or something. It looked like a P trap but with only enough depth for like a 1" water seal. But the manual is really clear it needs a trap with a 5" drop and 3" rise on the outlet side or else it won't have enough water to seal against the negative pressure inside the unit.
He changed it but it's got like a 5" drop and then maybe 1.5-2" rise on the outlet side? it's def not right
It's kind of not enough of a fuckup to make me question the guy's whole deal, but it's still kind of annoying because... it's not right, it ain't what the manual says it needs!
that's easy to fix if i get some more pipe but it just kinda feels like a very small issue r/n compared to the duct work, even if it is sucking back in water. I should probably still fix it though.