I am a child of the 80’s — well at least the high school and college years. Some of my contemporaries may remember a book that was all the rage back in those formative years called “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, a book, that I recall, followed a baby-boomer dude across country on his motorcycle who gave daily posts on his trip and the regular maintenance he preformed on his bike across country. I remember being fascinated by how he described the inter-related workings of the bike’s engine as if it were a almost a human body, and how all the parts and systems were so simple yet complex in their inter-relatedness.
Well today, I had a similar experience with my home’s HVAC.
Recently, the ceiling in my garage has been regularly raining water and chunks of drywall on my 4Runner, which although annoying and messy, is no where near as worrisome as where the hell that water is coming from….the roof? A shower? A poorly sealed window? Or something else…like a freaking leaking condensation return line in my Air Conditioning system, perhaps? hmm?
Well, the latter probably wouldn’t have initially been my guess, but when I mentioned it to my wife, who has lived in this house for 15 years versus my 1 year, she immediately suspected the Air Conditioning. Turns out, it’s been an issue for years.
So we call the home warranty company to send someone to fix it, which they do, and a nice young man crawls up into the attic above the garage (which is currently at a temp of about 183 degrees), who happily remedies the situation with a segment a replacement copper piping because apparently the previous pipe burst during our cold winter as the condensation exhaust water, left in the pipe from summer, expanded as it froze and the pipe burst. Bummer. Good thing we got some new pipe.
All seems well for about a week, and then the water comes back, and we call the Home Warranty company again, and the same HVAC company sends another bright-eyed happy young man to go up into the burning hell of my garage attic and check it out. Well he remedies the situation, spotting the new pipe immediately, and with surgeon-like efficiency, healing the problem with a masterful application of….duct tape. Seriously? Duct-tape? He assures me, that duct-tape got it’s name from fixing ducts…as in air conditioning ducts.
So I am dubious, but he assures me it will work and if not, call the company back directly, and they will come investigate this mystery further.
Well, the duct tape, regardless of it’s pedigree heritage, did nothing. Not even for a day. So we followed up as the nice young man had requested, to call the HVAC company back to continue to grapple with this perplexing technological puzzle.
So the newest version of the nice young man shows up, and apparently has heard about the inferno we call the garage attic and discovers that, low and behold, he doesn’t have a ladder that can reach the attic so there is no possible way he can get up there. In fact, his company has no trucks left in commission that could possibly carry a ladder that tall. Call me crazy, but this is their business right?…people do have HVAC systems and distribution in their attics…at least a fair portion?
And then, on top of this, the HVAC system completely stops working at all. Nothing, only the quiet still of heat. Hours and hours of baking upstairs while trying to sleep or take a shower. Sure, this sounds terrible in mid-July but the silver lining is that without any air conditioning, at least the condensed water was not cascading down on my 4Runner any more.
So anyway, we call the home warranty company again, and they send out a state-wide alert searching for an HVAC company that might still have some old-school, rickety, rusted-out truck that still can carry one of those old-fashioned ladders that allows a person to climb to heights upwards of 10-11 feet so that a human might be able to scale the treacherous pathway to our garage attic.
Thank God, our home warranty company found an outfit, probably from some secluded holler in West Virginia, that still had trucks carrying those treacherous ladders and were so off the beaten path, they had yet to hear about the cauldron of my attic, who came to sacrifice themselves so that others might sleep in a well-chilled bedroom.
They bravely ventured into the attic, and quickly identified the craftsman like artistry of the duct tape on the condensation pipe which, albeit impressive, did nothing to stop the leaking of another hole in the pipe, just a few feet further down the line. Apparently, in the Sudan-like, Africa-hot conditions of the attic, the previous duct tape artist had been too delirious to discover.
They suggested replacing the pipe. Seems crazy after all that expert duct taping, but there was a bigger issue to think about…insulation. Whatever solution they applied, if you are going to run any pipe that carries water in a state north of Carolina, you need insulation or else any water is going to freeze and burst the pipe. Given that Air Conditioning does not run in winter, I guess the thought of providing insulation was not a priority to the crack HVAC team that originally installed the system when the house was expanded in 2006.
But then why did the AC completely stop? This perplexed the brave young technicians, now completely soaked in sweat from the attic excursion. So they started thinking like the guy in “..The art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, tracing the cause and effects of all the systems at work in the HVAC of our house. If there is so much condensation water, what could be causing such a seasonal spike?
They traced it back to where condensation happens…at the cooling coils, where hot, humid air is quickly cooled, without freezing, by refrigerant, and that rapid cooling of humid air, like the morning dew on your summer grass, turns into water.
So they inspected the coils, and sure enough, they had not been cleaned or maintained in years (and BTW, I want to reiterate, I have only lived in the house just over a year…just sayin) and they were going to have to get this done we ever hoped to feel the cooling comfort of AC again.
While cleaning, they noted that the coils, even though they hadn’t operated in a day or so, were still cold. Given that they hadn’t cooled anything for hours and hours, this could only mean that they had be REALLY cold just recently…as in FROZEN.
And how does a coil freeze like that? When it doesn’t have refrigerant fluid to keep it from freezing while it’s cooling such a massive amount of hot air. The technicians discovered there was no refrigerant! How could that be?
Looking further down the process line, they found that the cap on the refrigerant supply line was missing…it had been removed by one of the myriad of happy-go-lucky young HVAC craftsman we had worked with in past weeks/months/years. Basically, our AC had been spewing refrigerant fumes into the hot humid Virginia air for God knows how long because some dazed and confused young technician had forgotten to replace the cap on some previous HVAC operation. During a due diligence search in an earlier HVAC meltdown, somebody had been too eager to get to the bottom of things without tying up the loose ends.
The moral here is about maintenance and understanding. Houses are incredibly miraculous creations when you think about it…almost like a living breathing organism. And like a living being, they need to be taken care of to stay healthy. No matter how impressive your kitchen, hot-tub, entertainment system, chandelier, or other outward, ornamental item may be, they are like jewelry or makeup…only a facade to change and replace. The real workings of a house, the systems, structure, plumbing, etc., are what make a house livable. Take care of them and they will take care of you.
You may buy a new Valentino suit, but if your heart and lungs are in disrepair, the next place you may be wearing the suit is in a wooden box.
So like the motorcycle, or your cardio-pulmonary-respiratory system, all the parts of a house work together, are dependent on each other, and must be maintained to function separately, and as a whole.
OK…so there. Now please excuse me, but I have a hankering for a green kale smoothie and some Greek yogurt. Bon apetit y’all.
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Kyle McAdams Homes = REALITECTURE 