Repair-It

Tenant texts me late on Friday night that the central A/C is not working right. Said it seems to be sucking in air, but not blowing any out. My first thought was he was confused but after calling him and checking a few things, it sure sounded to me like the evaporator coil was frozen up. I said to flip the heat/cool switch to off and turn the fan on manually. I figured if it was really iced up, that would melt it.

On Saturday I went over in the morning. They left the fan on all night and they said by morning air seemed to be flowing normally. They turned it back on in the 6am timeframe and by the time I went over, which was around 9:30am, it had iced up again. I verified all registers were open and not blocked, and that the filter was clean (I had just changed it when I left - but maybe my filter choice is too restrictive?).

I will also say that for the past 2 summers I did toy with calling an HVAC specialist to ensure the system was operating efficiently, but never did. I will admit a few times I had some doubt that vent temps were as cool as they were supposed to be. Perhaps that finally caught up and it needs an R-22 top off. Unless the coil is also in serious need of a cleaning, which it may be. So, I will have to call around and see who can come clean the coil and top off the charge for an affordable price.

My options are few. I can't very well say "too bad," because A) part of the rent is obviously going toward having the luxury of central A/C and B) they gave me their two old window A/C units specifically because they had no use for them.

Mind you, I lived in the house from late 2007 to a month ago and have had no issues with the system. Figures.

Side note: later that day I went to watch TV and the TV would turn on, but no picture would appear, and then it would turn itself off. Not my ~2001 era Sony HD CRT TV!! I power cycled the outlet (via the smart power strip) and it worked fine, although I've been noticing some pretty snappy noises from the screen when it turns on. Maybe the humidity is a problem? It WAS used to central air....

Side note 2: the tenant's stuff looks really good in my old house. Almost looks like a different house, which is kind of funny. Also, that house is tiny.

Side note 3: I am already tired of the window A/C situation at my new house. Yes I can make the bedroom comfortable but only the bedroom. I am going to install the 11,600 BTU A/C in the great room and hopefully it is just enough to handle this 24x24 room with the bi-fold doors closed. I see projects everywhere and can't afford to do most of them, particularly the ones that require professional services (to name two expensive ones: driveway and central A/C). Fortunately the nights have still been cool enough so that the house "resets" for the next morning but obviously that won't last.

In the spirit of documenting this (blog-style I suppose), I will also mention that my first rent check was "late." Not late per the lease but not on the 1st. They DID intend to pay later than the 1st due to financial reasons (order of operations with pay checks I believe), but also incorrectly addressed the envelope to the wrong town. I look forward to receiving the July check on time. Both mortgages hit a few days before the end of the month which creates some nice swings in the checking account.

I did a classic slumlord quick fix: I replaced the brand new high filtration filter with the Rheem "good" grade filter, which should flow more air. May be enough to prevent coil freezing though the right thing to do is have the coils cleaned and the system charge checked.

Some Home Depot-authorized contractor should be contacting me and I figure I'll try to get a free estimate, and then go from there.

The freer flowing air filter did not do the trick.

Called Aire Serv last week. Just got back from the appointment. $99 diagnostic which is waived if work is done. Seems fair.

The tech was from a part of the company that does all commercial work, but he said they use those guys for residential work depending on demand/time of season. He was pretty good.

First he inspected the evaporator coils, which wasn't super easy. I tried to talk him into just charging the system but he said this is part of the diagnostic process. Of course, the coils were super clean.

Outside he used his fancy digital manifold gauge set to determine that the system was, in fact, pretty low on refrigerant. It ended up taking 2.x lbs, out of a 66oz total capacity, so it was pretty low. He also put dye in it and didn't see anything at the condenser while there.

The digital gauges were indeed quite fancy. It had a readout for supercooling and superheating, which he said the superheating is how National Grid likes the systems to be charged to, as opposed to low or high side pressures. I asked about an inductive current probe on the compressor motor, which I have seen done once. He said that's kind of the previous generation of method.

It works well again and since it's so mild out and the system was running during the recharging process, it got down to 66F in there before we were done. Total bill was $328.74. They have flat rate pricing for certain kinds of repairs, which is handy. This job fell into the 1-3 lb charge of R-22 tier, which is that price. It would have been $202 if the recharge was additional work on top of an existing job. I also had a Yelp coupon. I purchased $200 worth of service for $155, so I ended up with a $45 discount which is cool.

Hopefully this lasts a good many years. I'll probably give these folks a call to get an estimate for adding central air to my current house, just so I have the info/numbers.

Pics to follow.

To remove the evaporator, he pulled the front duct panel off, which necessitated fooling with the condensate drain line, the furnace exhaust duct, and the refrigerant lines as they entered through this panel. X rated shot of the exhaust duct for the furnace. Specs on the condenser label. Digital gauge. We did talk about the advantages of analog dial gauges and he agreed for certain jobs (like commercial work on big systems where you go by pressures) that he uses those gauges. He said he is required to use the digital gauges for residential work. His licensing has ties with both the EPA (refrigerant use) as well as National Grid, to ensure he hits certain energy efficiency goals during service/install. Another X-rated shot of the condenser.

Wow, I thought a system like that would use a lot more refrigerant... But I guess it's different stuff than what we're used to..

Houses are way better insulated per square foot and per volume than cars. They also have far less sun load. I think the size of the coil looks proportional to the refrigerant capacity if you look at an automotive one. Probably around 2-2.5x the capacity of b-body a/c. Keep in mind that this is also a small central air system at around 2 tons (just like a b-body, hyuck).

Oh there was one funny part of the discussion.

I was asking about brands (Carrier and Trane being the top) and he said, ok, I'll use a car analogy. Now at this point I'm really hoping he was going to say "Carrier and Trane are like GM A/C." Instead he said "Carrier and Trane are like Ferrari." I didn't want to stress his analogy by asking if he meant they were expensive and fussy. However he did say that Rheem (what i have at my old house) was like Cadillac and some other brands were like Chevy and Ford. He also had a Yugo-level. But I forgot what that was because I hadn't heard of it and also was mad about the Ferrari analogy.

The Ferrari analogy is not a good one when I think about purchasing appliances or other household stuff. Basically, I want the Camry every time.

I guess I'll update this thread. 2 years later, my tenants have moved out, as they bought a new house (as in, new construction) in another town.

Here is my Onenote list of the things I did for tenant turnover:
- Install LED workshop light in basement. Get lamp adapter with ground
- Dryer vent cover
- Install new lower dishwasher rack
- Vacuum all vents, especially returns
- Clean out A/C condenser
- Hedge trimmer stuff
- Scrape and Paint bathroom ceiling
- Septic filter cleanout
- HVAC filter
- Tighten kitchen sink faucet handle
- oven light
- living room outlet
- flush hot water heater (need bucket)
- kitchen counter cleaner
- bathroom cleaner stuff
- Leaf blow gutters and deck

Scraping the paint in the bathroom was probably the most annoying. The dryer vent was probably a tie for equally annoying actually.

What did all this cost me in dollars? Around $160. I had the outlet already. And the HVAC filter was already there. Those are both cheap items. This is all tax deductible.

Time wise, I spent the good part of yesterday and probably 5 hours today.

How was check out condition? Well I gave them their entire security deposit back. I think the worst "damage" is the holes in two bedroom walls that were for TV mounts. That and lots of picture mount holes. I don't really know what I would have expected them to do. Patch and paint the entire house? That is not reasonable. I have extra paint for most of the rooms so theoretically I could have done a quick putty job and touch up in the right color. Maybe next turnover.

I hope these guys stay for a while. Obviously they will stay for their 1 year lease. After that I am not sure. I have good vibes about them at least as tenants. I met her parents and his mom today and they are nice, normal people. Her parents drove up from Florida to help with the move and clean stuff. It would figure, then, that they'll be good tenants and want to buy a house as soon as possible. She actually described her dream house which doesn't really match my ranch in NK (where I live now is more what she wants, big house, woods surrounding - they were here to sign the lease and mentioned this). But, everyone still loved the house and lot so maybe she'll come around depending on financial realities.

So i'll add this to this thread from my experiences of being a long distance landlord. Two time (with 2 different tenants) I've had the pleasure of receiving a phone call or txt's from the owner of the unit directly below mine. Both times the same message "hey, something is dripping/leaking from your unit into mine, please turn off (in 1 case it was from the toilet and the other was the AC which is central air)". The first time was just comical because the handle (or flusher) on the toilet broke on a Saturday night and my tenant didn't bother to tell me and I guess it started to back up and maybe overflow or something. I had to call around (this was on a Sunday) and find a plumber to go over immediately. Long story short, the plumber suggested to replace the entire toilet (think the issue was where the toilet made contact to the ground was loose and was allowing water to leak through or something like that) but the cost effective thing was just to replace vs. doing a repair job. Then, about a week ago, another phone call saying hey your AC is leaking, please turn off ASAP. This time, I contacted my tenant to ask him to please turn it off (which I felt bad making this request since he was out enjoying the day on a Sunday but at least it was like 4pm so not like I was really screwing him over on a day off). Additionally, I have a local handyman who I contacted and he gave me a company to contact- Queern. I tried calling one place (Travis Plumbing) before but was told that there were 40-50 people ahead of me on a list and the best they could do is put my name on the list and then call me as they got closer to my name. I called Queern who said they could look at it that day. Turns out it was just a condensate pipe being loose but the technician also had some recommendations on other things to do. However, in his report he mentioned that the tenant said how it takes significant time for the place to cool down. This had me wondering as to what temperature the tenant keeps it at because while I lived there (for 10 years) I never thought it took a lot time to cool down. And while I wanted to ask the tenant just for my own curiosity, I decided not to as the tenant is paying the electric bill so it's really not any of my business. Throughout this process, I did realize that I wasn't doing any yearly maintenance on the HVAC system so I decided to go forward and start doing that. I will give my tenant a ton of credit for being flexible with his schedule in helping me out to coordinate being home to let the technician in to do work. That's the problem of being of great distance away as I can't simply drive over to let someone in so I have to rely on my tenant. Although, I do find it interesting that the tenant didn't say anything to me sooner about the place taking awhile to cool down.