Rigid plastic conduit: unidirectional

Good judgment comes out of experience. Experience comes out of bad judgment.

It seems pretty obvious in hindsight, but somehow didn't come to my head that I might have problems running fish tape through a rigid plastic conduit with a few bends. Guess it is not usually a problem, otherwise it would be widely documented - or it may have been just my dumb luck, but...

Turned out that a wide and big 1" conduit run of 26ft with two 90° bends is not passable in either direction.

Took me a split second to realize why - the bell. The one that is at one end of each conduit component. The rest should be obvious.

Two conclusions:

• Do a dry run - works pretty well with plastic conduit, it holds up pretty well and you can probably get away with running it through even though it's not glued together yet;
• Plan ahead and remember that you may not be able to pass a conduit in one direction.

What did I end up with? Well... Had to cut the elbow out and reverse the direction. Don't be like me.

Fake Air Returns: Watch Out

I remember reading a post at HVAC-Talk a few years ago when someone wrote that a contractor just cut a hole in drywall, installed a return air grill and claimed that it is exactly what it is supposed to be - a return. Long and heated discussion followed (HVAC-Talk expires threads, so the source is no longer available), with polar opinions being a) yes, it's acceptable and b) not at all, you must provide the path.

I've seen grills leading to dead spaces a few times afterwards, which makes me think this is not an exception.

Now that I'm learning framing - well, turns out that the building code explicitly calls for installing what is called fire blocking: two-by stud material that runs horizontally from stud to stud - every 10 ft measured vertically in stud bays. Fire blocking interrupts the upward flow of flames and heat.

Two lessons:

1. There is no easy way to install an air return in a room;
2. There is no easy way to wire anything - studs (at the minimum) are horizontal obstacles, fire blocking (at the minimum) are vertical obstacles.

TANSTAAFL.

The Great Wiring Project, part 4

The Great Wiring Project, part 1
The Great Wiring Project, part 2
The Great Wiring Project, part 3

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This one is going to be really short: I thought I'd be able to get away without a patch panel. No such luck. Off looking for one. Suggestions welcome.

(to be continued)

Honey, there are gremlins in the house!

Like the saying goes, "Flying is the Second Greatest Thrill Known To Man, the First is Landing".

The most thrilling part of getting into a new house is the first night. Or any night, for that matter, until the dust settles. It's the time when you find out with excitement that the people that sold you the house forgot to mention that the neighbor behind the southern fence likes to play his electric guitar off key at 5AM, or that the guys across the street get their truck that is older than me out of the garage and start fiddling with the engine and revving it at about 11PM... You get the picture.

Then, deeper into the night, you start hearing noises. The one I'm talking about drove me nuts for several months until I figured out what it was. It's quite rare (so far), because the only HVAC units affected by it are the ones that are slowly ramping up and down.

I'm taking about loud bangs in more or less rapid succession, seemingly all across the house. Gremlins.

Hindsight is always 20/20, and now that all the facts are laid out before you it is quite simple to see what it is: it's the flat tin panels that comprise the ducts flipping back and forth when the pressure changes, all of them at different times. What makes it fun is that the sound pattern changes as the building ages - panels that used to be well insulated and thus somehow dampened are not anymore because of the insulation breakdown, and the more time passes, the more pronounced the phenomenon becomes.

It is also an indication of the fact that the pressure in the ducts is quite high, probably way above what it should be.

The best part? There's probably nothing you can do without significant amount of money or elbow grease injections, so might as well get used to it.

Proper fix, though, assuming the pressure is within reason, is to apply sound dampening materials to the outside surface of the ducts. I guess the trick would be to find a material that sticks to the surface and doesn't let it bang, and at the same time won't break down for a long time.

There are also products called "acoustic duct liners", but knowing how widespread the problem of undersized ducts is, I would be extremely cautious stuffing anything alien into the ducts, unless you're absolutely sure the duct itself is grossly oversized.

Which returns us all the way back to the heat loss and gain (a.k.a. heat load) calculation, but that's a different story for a different time...

Thank you for using @#$%S...

Someone who's been through one major and one minor flood, heat pump compressor, four or five pool pump motors, couple of pool filter tanks, few dead refrigerators is not likely to treat warranty issues lightly. Thus, after being somewhat dissatisfied with service contractors taking a bit too long (up to three-four days) to show up, I decided to abandon my warranty company in favor of @#$%S, a big, domestically owned, reputable company. There is safety in numbers, I thought.

How naive of me.

Jumping ahead, I did go to extreme depths to explain to them that I have not one, not even two, but three units and did have to pay extra premium for the service.

Being diligent, I decided to use the service that's been advertised among other warranty clauses - preventive maintenance. So I call them up, they give me a window a couple of weeks later, it's still February, I'm thinking, what could go wrong...

Right.

Guys show up, take a look at the unit, say it's not on their record, spend half an hour on the phone with headquarters, say this unit is not on their records. I say fine, there's another one, which is on your records, go take care of that. They do, profusely apologize, and leave. I call up again and explain that the unit in question is not quite up to snuff and has to be looked up, they say sure, and schedule another appointment two weeks later.

No call, no show. With a window like 9 to 12 or 1 to 5, it's quite aggravating - half a day is wasted.

Another call, another two weeks. A crew arrives with gusto, steps up to the unit and says "Dude! This unit is not on our records!" as I stare at them in disbelief. So I make them write down the model and serial numbers of all HVAC equipment, upon completion of which task they notify me that I have not three, but five units, namely, one rooftop, two condensers and two air handlers. Fine, as long as the unit gets taken care of. They say they can't do anything now without headquarters approving, and leave.

Another hour on hold, another conversation, another two weeks. Another crew arrives. Guess what? The unit is still not on records.

Another hour on hold, another conversation, another two weeks. Another no call, no show.

I'm thinking, it's costing me too much aggravation already, the hell with it - if it breaks, they'll fix it. So I leave it alone.

So the summer comes. In June, one of my HVAC units goes dead (the one @#$%S "maintained"). I call @#$%S, they say it'll take them 9 (nine) days for them to dispatch the serviceman. I tell them this is unacceptable, keep biting their ankles every day - and 8 days later, the guy shows up. Replaces the fuse and is on his way. Not that I would believe that the fuse is the root cause, but there's nothing I can do with it - all in all, he's a professional...

Within two weeks, the unit is dead again, with the same symptoms. To make the long story short, it took them over a week to send someone over (mind you, we're talking about August in Phoenix), and the unit did get fixed. Ground short.

This is not a kind of service one pays premium for, so BBB complaint gets filed, processed, and somewhere in the middle of the winter a symbolic compensation comes. End of story.

Or so I thought.

What made me dig up this stinking corpse is that an appliance I bought a while ago, it turns out, has its warranty served by @#$%S. Damn, I say, let's hope it works this time.

Yeah, right.

Scheduled visit number one, 1 to 5 window. No call, no show. At 4:30 service center is called, and they are telling me that the contractor is actually parked in front of my house. Right. At 5:30 another call to service center, and they're told about the fact that contractor never made it in from the driveway, about pretty contemptible track record, of preexisting BBB complaint. They politely apologize and say they will have to call back reschedule.

A day passes. No call. Calling them. Another hold, another conversation, another 1 to 5 service window. Another no call, no show.

I wonder, are they brain dead? Okay, it may be fine to screw things up once. Not so okay, but happens twice in a row. But six??? And a complaint??? And, after that, two times in a row again?

Now, for those curious about the actual identity of the company... Pretty easy to figure out - I just want to leave myself some maneuvering space in case they ever get to read this and decide to send me a cease and desist. That would be fun to watch, though, and something tells me that I'm not the only one having this kind of experience. And have no doubts, another BBB complaint is on the way.

The most saddening thought? They're not alone. This winter, the unit I was trying to take care of in this story has finally died (pretty non-trivial failure, as it eventually turned out), and the contractor that was trying to fix it tried everything he could think of (took couple of weeks to order the parts, have them delivered, and another appointment scheduled), then just "recharged" the unit and said "Let's pray that it keeps working".

I guess he wasn't praying hard enough. But that's a different story for a different time.

Contractor Grade, adj.

"Contractor Grade". Magic words. The bumper sticker saying "Licensed contractors build confidence" springs up in my mind, and my posture straightens, and my hand is twitching uncontrollably to salute whoever came up with that.

That is, until another phrase pops up. "Shop Talk". Defined as "way to talk about your business in presence of outsiders in a way that only others in the same business can understand".

So what does it mean, really?

"The cheapest product that is necessary to check off the mark indicating a presence of an entity as an integral or optional part of more complicated entity".

Anything even remotely decent will be marked up as an "upgrade".

Go with reputable contractor, they say

More than once I've heard HVAC contractors say that the quality of the equipment is nowhere as important as the quality of the installer. They say, you can buy a cheap Goodman unit, have it installed by a reputable contractor, and have a better result than when you pay three to five times more for a Trane or Carrier unit and have it installed by a nincompoop.

It's all good and well, except for one thing.

Define "reputable".

Do you really think you're qualified to determine whether the contractor is reputable or not? Remember, smooth talk and clean look is not an indicator of the fact that he is either honest or knowledgeable. Neither is jaded look and arrogance, by the way.

OK, suppose you admit it, you aren't. Who do you think is?

Your neighbor Joe must be. He told you that he's really ecstatic with the quality of work that a contractor Bob did last week, and low rates he's charged. So you go and hire Bob, only to meet Joe next week and hear the horror story about how the next contractor he'd hired, Jim, uncovered all sorts of shortcuts, omissions and stupid things that Bob did - and actually, that he's now suing Bob for anguish and mental suffering. Now, that gives you a warm and cozy feeling.

"Check credentials", they say... What exactly do you know about credentials? With all those "get the degree you deserve for the price you can afford" spam messages flying into your inbox by hundreds every day, how can you be sure?

Point is, you really can't know. You can't hire honesty and experience, you may just stumble upon it by sheer luck. But chances are really slim, because uncle Darwin knew what he was talking about when he said "survival of the fittest", and mind you, "fittest" doesn't necessarily means "better" as defined by you, but "better" as defined by competition rules. Racking up enough volume by cutting all imaginable corners to squeeze out those who are spending too much time honestly doing their job to the best of their ability is good enough in that book.

One way out of it? Make sure you know what they are talking about. Only then you can hire a knowledgeable contractor. Hiring experienced (as in street smart, not book smart)? Hiring honest? I'm not in a position to give you any advice about that...

And don't ever make a mistake of thinking that there's safety in numbers and you can cheat by hiring a big company to do what you need done, thinking that you can go after them if they screw it up. All that will happen is they will bleed you to death sending many crews one after another to fix the screwup, each of which will have approximately the same amount of clue (asymptotically approaching zero), requiring you to be at home, say, eight to two, or twelve to five, day after day, week after week, and each crew fixing one thing (optional) and breaking two in exchange (mandatory). Just say no.

Hmm... That turned out acid all right. According to the above, we're screwed completely. As I was thinking this article over and disliking the way it is (all negative), a glimpse of hope sparkled in my head when I thought of reputation systems. But then, immediately, when I googled up "hvac contractor reputation system", this article came out on top... Hmm... I guess some work is waiting to be done.