New homeowner, 4 visits from HVAC company with no resolution
Hi all,
Appreciate any and all advice. To preface, I am a new homeowner and purchased a home with a 2022 HVAC system from Carrier, controlled with two ecobee thermostats. There is one unit with a multi zone system across two floors.
When I purchased the home a few weeks ago, I was able to set the air to 75 during the day and the house would easily be maintained at that temperature with the system running maybe 3 or 4 hours a day, when exterior temperatures were in the 80s - 90s.
At night, I could set the system to 68 upstairs and my primary bedroom would drop from 75 to 68 within an hour or so. Then it would run maybe another hour or two through the night to maintain 68.
Fast forward two weeks, we found a leak in our living room. Tons of remediation work requiring dehumidifiers running for 24 hours a day for a week. AC was running almost nonstop to keep the home under 85 degrees. We weren’t home for a lot of this as insurance put us in a hotel.
Once the remediation equipment was taken away, I could tell the AC just didn’t feel that cold anymore and was struggling to cool the home.
I called a local HVAC company through my home warranty, who cleaned out the system, dropped in some tablets into the condensation pump, replaced the filter (aprilaire 813) and then discovered a leak in the line set outside by the condenser.
They came back two days later to replace the line set and said to run on fan only for 3 hours and then turn air back on. Now it runs maybe 14 hours a day to maintain 75 degrees at the coldest.
Ambient temperatures have dropped to the 70s here and our air still can’t cool the home at all.
HVAC company came out again, said system was freezing over (I hadn’t used the system for 14 hours), said the filter could be causing it, reminded them it was brand new.
The air still does not feel that cold, the system has so much condensation that it’s puddling in our garage, and has to run 14+ hours a day just to maintain 75 inside.
I’m at my wits end, but feel backed into a corner that I have to use this HVAC company due to the warranty coverage. Should I just bite the bullet and hire a different company? Any other ideas that could be causing this quick death of a relatively new system? I was told the system would work better than it ever did when I paid for the line set replacement.