The house speaks (and it is not happy!)
Dec. 4th, 2015 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indigo_rose99Remember when the house woke us up on a Saturday morning by being insanely hot? Yep, that was not a one time deal. I worried that it would do it again while we were in Florida. We have no idea whether it did or not, but I suspect yes.
So Saturday after Thanksgiving it decided to play the whole heat-the-upstairs game again. So I called in a professional to look at it. Happily, they have Saturday hours. Jose came (It shows how much time I spent with this man, as I actually remember his name!) and crawled around in our brownie-sized attic and finally explained his conclusion to us.
Our house has 2 zones: Upstairs and downstairs. There is temperature controller on each floor, set to differerent temperatures. When one floor needs cold or hot air, a damper (his word!) switches the air to flow to that floor. The damper had died due to old age. And thus the machine was trying desperately to heat up the downstairs.... but only able to send hot air to the upstairs.
So the obvious temporary solution was to shut down one of the controllers. We shut down the one not controlling our bedroom. Jose said he would get a new damper for us. But he warned that it would be a challenge because our house is more than 15 years old and it the original damper.
Days later, Jose returned with damper in hand. He went back up into our nonexistent attic (Seriously, I thought that opening in the ceiling was decorative. There is NO ROOM up there for a human!) to return and say that the vendor had lied. The new damper is not compatible. He would have to talk to his manager. Jose explained that the modern dampers have 2 wires: on and off. Our old damper has FIVE wires. Jose is not even sure what all of those do!
Jose's manager called the next day. Evidently the board that connects to the damper (with the 5 wires from it) also needs to be replaced to get a new damper. Nothing wrong with our old board, but they have nothing compatible with it. They would give us the new board at cost, only uping our cost by about $150. I said yes.
This is why we had Jose in our house most of yesterday evening (from about 4pm to 8pm?) fighting to get the new board and damper to all talk to the other pieces of the house. Poor Jose. During this time, he watched and smelled me making dinner, having guests over, eating dinner, making eggnog, drinking eggnog, AND putting up a Christmas tree!
So hopefully now we have working temperature control throughout the house. I'm not going to call it fixed until we have fully tested the system, but I am hopeful. Jose seemed like the honest and dedicated sort.
So Saturday after Thanksgiving it decided to play the whole heat-the-upstairs game again. So I called in a professional to look at it. Happily, they have Saturday hours. Jose came (It shows how much time I spent with this man, as I actually remember his name!) and crawled around in our brownie-sized attic and finally explained his conclusion to us.
Our house has 2 zones: Upstairs and downstairs. There is temperature controller on each floor, set to differerent temperatures. When one floor needs cold or hot air, a damper (his word!) switches the air to flow to that floor. The damper had died due to old age. And thus the machine was trying desperately to heat up the downstairs.... but only able to send hot air to the upstairs.
So the obvious temporary solution was to shut down one of the controllers. We shut down the one not controlling our bedroom. Jose said he would get a new damper for us. But he warned that it would be a challenge because our house is more than 15 years old and it the original damper.
Days later, Jose returned with damper in hand. He went back up into our nonexistent attic (Seriously, I thought that opening in the ceiling was decorative. There is NO ROOM up there for a human!) to return and say that the vendor had lied. The new damper is not compatible. He would have to talk to his manager. Jose explained that the modern dampers have 2 wires: on and off. Our old damper has FIVE wires. Jose is not even sure what all of those do!
Jose's manager called the next day. Evidently the board that connects to the damper (with the 5 wires from it) also needs to be replaced to get a new damper. Nothing wrong with our old board, but they have nothing compatible with it. They would give us the new board at cost, only uping our cost by about $150. I said yes.
This is why we had Jose in our house most of yesterday evening (from about 4pm to 8pm?) fighting to get the new board and damper to all talk to the other pieces of the house. Poor Jose. During this time, he watched and smelled me making dinner, having guests over, eating dinner, making eggnog, drinking eggnog, AND putting up a Christmas tree!
So hopefully now we have working temperature control throughout the house. I'm not going to call it fixed until we have fully tested the system, but I am hopeful. Jose seemed like the honest and dedicated sort.
