Nightmare residential A/C maintenance story
When I bought my house in South Florida, the A/C had been installed by a local small business who offered to honor the warranty. So far, it’s run fine. A few years ago the compressor needed replacing and last summer they replaced a capacitor. I would’ve done that myself but I’m in a townhome and the condenser is on the roof and owners aren’t allowed on the roof (for insurance).
The system: Rheem RCHL-48A1GH24 and RBHP-24J11SH4.
Fast forward to this summer and I texted the owner who got flaky with responses so I texted the manager asking if they could come and clean the condenser coils, vacuum out the evaporator drain pan, and install a C wire to my thermostat.
It literally took them 6 weeks to finally commit and put me on the schedule. I’m seeing that as a red flag as I’m writing it, but you have to understand how hard it is to find a small local HVAC guy who’s honest and not been bought by private equity and turned into a salesforce.
So a tech shows up, removes my evap coil cover and finds an additional metal guard in front of the coil with a zip tie securing it. Instead of clipping the zip tie, he pulls with all his might on the metal guard which comes out after snapping the bottom of the plastic drain pan. I watched him do this and it was alarming, but he vacuumed it out and it seemed fine.
We had to run out and were barely gone for an hour, and when we returned our A/C closet was absolutely flooded. Turns out he snapped the coil guard so hard there was a crack down the entire front of the drain pan.
So I tell manager, tech comes back and says the drain line wasn’t primed so water was flowing backwards (apparently defying physics since the drain line outside was bone dry). He agrees to replace the drain pan on the evap coil and I told him I think snapping the cover off did it, and he reluctantly agreed. Said he’d be back in a few hours.
As the day went on, the house got hotter, eventually reaching 87F. I tell the tech & manager it’s not cooling, manager says he’ll replace the whole evap coil with the drain pan (no duh) but can’t get one til the morning. I also noticed the compressor getting louder and louder so I turned it off and just used the fan. It was sweaty night #1
Next morning comes, tech shows up and installs brand new coil in 3 hours. I tell him not to leave because it’s not cooling, just blowing hot air around. He tells me to give it time. I know what it feels like when A/C doesn’t work, and this was it. I ask what his thermal gun showed for the closest vent, he said 60F, mine said 80F and I'm still standing there sweating. Just a week before I have pics of that vent reading low 50s from a comfortable distance.
I ask him if he pulled a vacuum before filling the refrigerant, he deflects the answer and says he’s gonna go add more. Keeps going up to the roof and coming back down and the temp inside isn’t budging at all and this guy is BSing me nonstop to my face. I asked him for the superheat subcool readings, couldn’t tell me what they were. So I called supervisor and when the tech heard that he just packed up and bailed.
Supervisor gave me the runaround saying “it takes time, your house has been in the heat all day and it’s a hot day.” Total BS, thermostat still showing 87F inside after running for 4 hours and a brand new coil.
I call owner, he says he spoke to the tech and all is well, "it just needs time." I told him I’m not going to argue and the system is not cooling and he needs to come. He says he’ll come in 4 hours.
Meantime I call another company, tech shows up within an hour, takes his readings, shows me all gauges within 5 minutes and reads a subcooling of 2.8F and says they didn’t add enough refrigerant. All I asked him to do was diagnose bc the first company blew their trust when the tech said he hosed down my condenser coil but my camera system showed him pack his ladder and leave 10 mins after we left without ever getting out a hose.
So owner finally comes, says “wow it’s hot” when he comes in, gets people on the roof and they start troubleshooting. Long story short, he discovers that the coil requires a TXV kit addon to work with my system. So we wait while the supervisor brings the old coil, they remove the TXV from that and put it on the new coil and the system finally starts cooling. I definitely think the tech who did the install knew or should have known this was a required step for my system, since the outgoing damaged coil had a TXV kit.
But wait, there’s more.
I insist before owner leaves to show me the manifold readings and he’s about to leave and I put my foot down, so he shows me a subcooling of 3.1F and goes to leave. I said no, it needs to be 8-12F and he gives me a song and dance about how “it’s cooling so the house needs to cool off and it’ll get there” nonsense. I tell him unacceptable. He says if he adds more refrigerant (system has been running over 30 mins at this point) then the temperature might go up! I said add it anyway. He kept pointing to the probe in my plenum saying the temp is dropping but it’ll just take time bc the whole house is so hot and it’ll take hours to get the subcooling "dialed in" so they'll just come back the next day, says that's how they do all their jobs. I said no, finish this now. He starts practically crying saying he has a doctor's appointment and how he did me such a big favor by replacing the coil WHICH HIS TECH BROKE!
Finally I said if you leave, the job isn't done, but leave if you must. And then I showed him the report from the other company. He had an answer for that too. "Who charges $185 for a service call? What's that guy's license number?"
So I told him if he leaves that he better show up tomorrow with refrigerant, prepared to give gauge readouts before and after any work on the system begins, and with a check for the second opinion.
He has the nerve to say what about my check to him for the new coil and the routine maintenance they did?
At that point I asked him to leave, told him be here at 8:00am or sooner and if he's not here at 8:01am I'm having someone else do it and suing him for that invoice and the diagnostic invoice (and I absolutely will).
An hour after he left, the system definitely was cooling, but it stopped getting much cooler and I could tell the compressor was getting louder and louder.
So, now it’s sweaty night #2 because I hear the compressor getting loud again, so I’m shutting it off until these scumbags come back tomorrow morning.
I’d like to hear from pros: the owner and this company are totally unprofessional and incorrect, right? Or am I just overly demanding because I want my A/C to work like it did before these people ruined it?
My understanding from a lay perspective is that the subcooling is meant to measure the physics balance in the refrigerant line and is independent of the temperature inside the home, is that right?
What would you do or what would you recommend I do?