Heat Pump Fiasco

burnerman_2

i went to a vo-tech nite school and heard this happened in our area i bet if more people knew the actual cost they may save mone had a coworkers daughter's house was always cold (bought from someone only 2 years old) found out the emergency heat was not wired uo so below 30 chillsville the customer depends on us so we need to do a good job royboy

Eugene Silberstein 3

Kudos to a New Heat Pump Master

I have to send kudos to one of the students enrolled in the HVAC/R program here at Suffolk County Community College. It appears that Sean Sallee, in his third semester at the college, has unravelled a ten year old heat pump problem.

Here's the scoop:

A family moved to a condo development that had newly installed heat pump systems to provide their heating and cooling needs. This family had no previous experience with heat pump systems and were a little shocked when they started getting their monthly electric bill of about $1,000. The bill was pretty consistent, month in and month out, so they thought that this was the norm.

To satisfy their curiousity, they called in a number of air conditioning contractors to check the system to make certain that all was well. No company found anything wrong with the system.

Last week, the family decided to call in another company to check the system out. The technician that arrived at the residence was Sean. The customer told Sean about his concerns. Sean proceeded to check out the system and make the find of the century. (Well at least the find of the afternoon).

It seems that the installation crew wired in the heat pump so that the heat pump itself and ALL OF THE ELECTRIC STRIP HEATERS were energized on an initial call for heat. So, whenever the heat pump was on, so were the strip heaters.

So, for the last few heating seasons, this customer was paying through the you-know-what for heating.

Once again, Kudos to Sean for looking for the obvious when others didn't.

Ken Field

Heatpump Wiring

LIPA must be ticked off. There probably sending there gorillas after Sean right now. There profits just crashed and our rates are going to be increased. Lets see 10 year old problem, 1,000/Mo times say 6 Mo. equals 60,000. And everyone said all was OK? I sure hope Sean got a good tip. After 35 years in this field I have seen that anything beyond three wires gets complicated for a good portion of techs out there.
Do you offer control wiring courses at the college Gene?

Unknown

First thing...

anyone should suspect on a high heat pump electric bill call is that the strip heaters are on too much. First time I heard this one though.

I found a 20 yo problem myself once many years ago in an old Shoetown store (remember those?). Seems the original installer tied W to G in order to get the fan to come on for heat. Consequently when the heat was on, so was the A/C and when the A/C was on so was the heat. 20 years, "never worked right from day one" and was checked again and again by different people over that time.

burnerman_2

A/C HEAT PART 2

i had a guy wodered y he was usin so much kero he'd come home house was warmm turned down themostat well one day came home sit on the chair noticed a/c came on then heat then a/c and so on (trailer seperate themostats) answered that question royboy

Unknown

Not to get sidetracked but...

Back to my nostalgic ramblings, I hadn't though about the Shoetowns for a long time. If you've ever been in any Shoetown in CT, Boston, Albany, NYC, LI and all the area in between MPF has been there to service or repair the HVAC. I can't remember where the one I told you about was but I thought it would be intersting to note that Shoetown was the kind of organization that treated it's people so well that THE SAME GUY that was there when the store was new and had just opened was still working there 20 years later when I took the HVAC over. I believe they closed them all? At least in CT. Maybe 10-15 years ago now.

don_185

Restriction

I find lots of restriction in the heat side of the refrigerant circuit for high power bills.along with a poorly
design distribution system.

Sold three jobs this week alone for repairing restriction and duct replacement.