Personal disaster averted

[POINTER94]

Some of you know that I spend quite a bit of time away from home. Well of course while gone the furnace on my home went out. Well Wednesday night the wife calls up and explains what is going on and that the heat won't come on. She survives the night with an extra blanket and calls a heating contractor. I called my neighbor who works maintanance at a large mfg'r to oversee the inspection to make sure I didn't get repairs not needed. According to him the evaluation by the service tech was right on. But then there was the price's. Well long story short the furnace is 17 years old and need 700 bucks worth of repairs or needs replacing.

Get this quote:

2200 sq ft home, 60,000 btu replacement furnace, 2 stage. $4800 dollars plus $1600 to clean the duct work. I gave him every opportunty to ammend this quote but he just got more pushy with me.

Called a couple of buddies in the trades and got a hold of a small operator who installed what I am told is a better unit than the Carrier, it was a RUUD???? I did all this while working at a trade show and making presentations. Total $2000 for the furnace installed, 2 stage, 92+ % efficient. Duct cleaning $350.

I would have snapped a twig if I had paid for the initial quote. What was that idiot thinking. Granted I got the Good ol boy discount but gouging is bad business. Any HVAC guys have any idea whether this guy was so far out of line or did I just get a really good deal from someone?

 

[Plainsman]

Re: Personal disaster averted

Saved yourself a large chuck of change by being a smart shopper. It's not always what you know, but who you know.

 

[dolluper]

Re: Personal disaster averted

The 1600 for duct cleaning wowwww!! FIRST RED FLAG........ for installing new stainless steel ducts maybe .....350 was more in line ,Standard charge

 

[roscoe]

Re: Personal disaster averted

You paid about right.
The first guy wanted to pay for his trip to Hawaii.

 

[treedancer]

Re: Personal disaster averted

I had a similar situation a few years ago with my Mom, she lived in St.Louis, in a older house with radiator heat. She noticed that there was steam coming form the boiler, plus a lot of water.
She looked in the yellow pages and noticed this company that had twenty four hour emergency service in there add. She gave them a call; they got a crew out there and told here that she would have to replace the whole boiler.
Luckily I was in town that week, and she called me to tell me that they were about to tear the old boiler out, I told her not to let them start till I got there. She got a hold of the what, I guess was the crew chief, and put him on the phone he was about to tell me to go to hell, until I told him that was my house and he better not start tearing things up until I got there .
Of course it wasn’t but at least it slowed him down and put the kernel of doubt in his mind. What roused my suspicions was why would they be a whole crew responding to a service call at ten o’clock at night to shorten out this tale when I got there and looked the situation over along with a few of my friends.
We found that the pressure relief valve had kicked in and it was replaced the next day for twenty dollars That old boiler was replaced five years later for half of what Missouri Heating Service wanted to charge. They are no longer in business in the St.Louis Area.:devil:

 

[Boomyal]

Re: Personal disaster averted

Unfortunately, there are some real predators in the HVAC business. They especially prey on the uninformed. A few years back, my daughter goosed the thermostat causing the heatpump compressor to shut of then rapidly restart. It blew a reset button out on the compressor unit that I was not aware of. I called a local service and the end result was a $240.00 bill to pull off a little access panel and hit a red reset button.

I called the business and asked them what their their service call charge, hourly rate, and time on the job was was. I was rudely told that they do not track that and that my wife had agreed to the 'quoted' repair charges. End of conversation.

I feel sorry for people who have no basic feel for these kind of things. They are regularly getting screwed.

 

[Parrott_head]

Re: Personal disaster averted

Carrier is every bit the quality of Ruud but the price was not right. It was a little high for just a furnace replacment

Ruud uses a scroll compressor on their A/C now, not sure what Carrier uses. I'm not convinced that scroll compressors are as good as they claim to be.

 

[POINTER94]

Re: Personal disaster averted

Ryan, the installer I went with said they are all pretty much the same, but in years past the Bryant/Carrier brands had been a majority of his service calls. That could just be the popularity of the brands.

In the good better best senario I got what was called the better. A two stage burner. The best comes with a vfd or dc motor that can vary the speeds of the fan and the two stage burner. I was told to stay away from these as they are very new and if they go out the replacement for these motors is very expensive. To be honest I could put a VFD drive on the thing, (I sell them) but then I would need to change over to a three phase motor. Ain't gunna do that.

The scroll style compressors have been around a few years. There should be data on the reliability of them by now. I didn't have to replace anything regarding the AC portion of my system. I got a new A coil about a year ago and the compressor seems to be working fine. I would imagine in a couple of years that too will need to be replaced. :'(

I have been told that the seer rating has been increased to 13 from 10 on the AC. My replacement A coil is only a 10.... I guess I would get about 10 maybe even 11 if I left the coil in place and just replaced the compressor.

 

[Parrott_head]

Re: Personal disaster averted

Reliability of the scrolls is decent enough. The trouble is they do not create as much differential pressure as the positive displacement pumps. (pistons)

They run with less noise and pull fewer amps but I don't think they cool as well due to the reduced differential pressure.

VFD or PWM drives are fine if you size them correctly. We had to go to 7.5 HP Lincoln motors to get the same results we were getting from 5 HP motors. To their credit we never burned up a Lincoln aluminum wound motor in all the tens of thousands of hours we ran them.

Blew up a bunch of drives but no motors.

 

[QC]

Re: Personal disaster averted

Murphy's law of traveling salesmen: The only time big stuff breaks is when you're on the road . . .

Last time, I ended up with a mismatched tire, and the guy tried to talk her into four to match them all up

I found the correct one when I got home, but ended up with eating a new one just for the week I was gone :|

I've had plumbing stuff, a dead rat in the AC, new refrigerator and a new washer and dryer all happen when traveling . . .

 

[Reel Poor]

Re: Personal disaster averted

Well dayum.......There went the dirt bike top end. :^ :| :'(