Apprentice air flow loss tester, locked and loaded, hero given the boot

So yesterday afternoon I had to meet the AC contractors once again.  This time it was to have our AC system tested for air flow loss, a requirement to qualify for the Florida $1500 HVAC rebate.  The test was to be conducted by Julie, the same woman that gave us the quote on system replacement. The test is designed to measure the amount of air loss in your AC system by depressurizing it.

Not only do they depressurize your AC system, they do the same to the house.  The way they do this is by putting a tarp that goes into your front door opening.  The tarp has a hole in it where a fan is mounted that sucks air out of the house.  It took a little while till everything was set up.  Julie turned on the fan and all of the cool air was sucked out of the house.

When the house is at a negative pressure level you can easily feel the various spots where air leaks into and out of the living space.  As I walked around I could feel the air rushing in from behind every single outlet cover, light switch and light fixture.  The worst offender of all were the vents in both bathrooms.  Evidently the builder used a cheap, shitty model that does not close off air flow when they aren’t running, what a surprise.

After depressurizing the house all of the air vents had to be covered.  Julie is a short little middle aged woman.  I actually covered up the vents that were high on the vault ceiling as she would have a tough time reaching them.

It was pretty obvious that Julie had just recently completed the training for the testing.  She had to read the directions often during the set up process, it was easy to tell she wasn’t quite sure how it all should go.  Once she started depressurizing the the ac system she was getting numbers that weren’t good.  To pass the test the CFM flow through a closed ac system for our size equipment should be no more than 180 cfm.  She was seeing numbers in the low 300’s.

Her instructions told her to open a door in the house for some reason.  I cracked the rear slider about a foot.  The house was still being depressurized.  Opening the slider resulted in a very strong wind blowing right through the great room out to the front door, it was very weird.

Julie was still not getting numbers that seemed right.    I walked around the house and discovered that the vent in the laundry room was not covered.  I grabbed the film and covered it.  Doing so dropped the number down into the high 200’s.  Julie was perplexed why the number would still be that high.  She headed up in the attic to look for any obvious leaks.

Before Julie went into the attic she was already sweated through her shirt from working inside the house with no AC running.  Even though it was overcast and raining, going into the attic was still going to be a pretty brutal venture.  Julie was no stranger to getting dirty so up she went.  She meticulously went around the system and taped/mastik’d anything that looked even slightly questionable.  While she did that I went around the house and did additional covering of the vents.  Julie had just put the film over register itself but didn’t extend the film over the edge onto the drywall.  I could feel that some air was getting sucked in behind the register so I re-covered every vent in the house. I also was adjusting the fan flow on the diagnostic equipment to keep the pressure numbers in the proper range.

Between Julie’s efforts and mine the CFM number dropped down to 220, better but not a passing grade.  By the time Julie came out of the attic she was a total mess.  She had completely sweated through all of her clothes and was covered in dirt.  I felt really bad that she had to endure that and gave her a few bottles of water.

She was annoyed that after all that effort that the number still wasn’t what it should be.  Then she said she was going to turn off the fan that was depressurizing the house and see what the number was.   After flipping off the big fan the AC reading dropped down to 134 cfm, well below what it needed to be.  “There you go!” she said.  She said it didn’t make sense what the instructions were telling her to do ( opening a door while depressurizing the house).  She said she is going to use 134 as the official number.

I was fine with using the 134 number although I am not totally convinced that the house legitimately passed.  While Julie was up there she noticed that the return duct was leaking around a spot where it was seamed together.  She said she wanted to replace that duct to avoid possible future problems.  Since there was no additional charge I was fine with the proactive work, it just means we have to have Ali at the house again whenever it happens.

During the job I got a background about Julie.  She told me about her horrendous real estate situation.  Her home has dropped down to 25% of  it’s highest value.  This year she is on pace to make about 45% of what she normally makes due to the bad economy and some changes in the company.  It made me feel better about giving her our business.

There was one more thing that was supposed to be addressed during Julie’s visit.  Along with the vents being replaced, the return grill was also replaced.  The return was supposed to be the same size as what we had, 18×24.  Well it wasn’t, it was slightly bigger so our normal filters would not fit, they were a little too small.  Julie brought stuff to extend the flange in the return so the filters would fit.

Well when I saw how much of a mess Julie was when she came out of the attic I took it upon myself to do the flange work myself.  Julie made absolutely no fuss about me doing the work and told me where the supplies were.  I used her ladder, her snips, her metal and her pan head screws. She worked on putting away all of the equipment while I installed the flange extension which took me maybe 15 minutes.  After I was done I was able to put our filters in without them getting sucked into the return although Julie said the filters we had were too restrictive and not recommended.

So Julie finally was ready to head out, in total she was at our house around 4 hours, much longer than I expected.  I was hoping I would be 100% done with the AC replacement process after yesterday but unfortunately the finish line is a bit farther away.  One other piece of the puzzle was completed yesterday when the new system was inspected and passed by the county guy.

So after my back and forth exchange yesterday with my IX Webhosting support hero I was contacted by his manager per my request later in the day.  He had read the emails and had a general idea of what went down.  I quickly and calmly recounted what went down and why I was annoyed with it.

The manager listened and reiterated that normally support doesn’t get involved in email recovery at all but also agreed that since IX did start the process it should have been handled better.  He agreed that Brandon made a few mistakes like not setting up an OOO reply on his email and not working hard enough at following up on the problem before the old data was destroyed.  By the time we were done he had a clear understanding of what upset me about what happened.

The manager also honored my request to assign me to a new support hero and assured me that Brandon would be talked to about what was wrong about the way this was handled.  My new hero Tom left me a voicemail and email yesterday saying he was happy to help me in any way he could in the future.  I think Tom and I will get along  just fine.

This weekend is going to be my first sprint triathlon.  It’s going to consume most of our weekend.  We plan to leave Saturday afternoon for the Sunday race.  Luckily my mom agreed to come over Saturday and dog sit for us.

There are a lot of hoops to jump through for these races.  You HAVE to check in the day before, no if’s and’s or but’s.  Checking in means leaving your bike there, getting numbers written on your body and giving you all of your race stuff.

Then on race day, even though you already did all that crap on Saturday, they want you to still show up like 3 hours early.  I see a whole lot of hurry up and wait time this weekend, something I totally loathe.

Not only are we bed pooling with Michelle and Christy we also are going to all car pool in the party van.  In order to accommodate three bikes and 4 people I am going to hopefully utilize the bike rack to hold at least two of the three bikes.  I don’t think I could lay three bikes on top of the bed in the back.

As of now I am not really nervous about the event.  I have done the training and I know I can do it, it’s just a matter of how fast.  In a way I always dread real races because I know how hard I push myself.  In the moments of extreme exertion your mind and body play nasty games back and forth.  High, wimpy voices in your head say it would be easy to just stop or slow down.  Manly, deep voices say suck it up p&ssy!  It will be done soon enough!

Do the hard thing, the power will come.