air conditioning question??

keith_7

here is a good question of how do you tell these people! i checked a system last week, there complanint was the unit is running all the time. after servicing the system i also did a heat gain and heat loss on the house. ac gain totaled out to close to 30,000 btu. condensing unit is 36,000. but here is the problem the house is loaded junk!! i mean every square inch of this house has stuff piled up waist to neck high. two thirds of the supply registers are blocked. how do you politly tell these people that they have to clean up there act and get this house is order if they want the ac system to work??? sort of non heat related for this site but trying to get a little input on what to tell these people.

Robert O'Connor_5

Junk??

Just tell them politely. If you want the house to stay cool you must first remove any obstructions from around any registers. Sounds like there is more to this story. I told an owner (on a forced hot water job) that if they kept the curtains away and cleaned the fins every so often and didn't keep certain furniture and clothing (and junk) up against the room terminals they would heat the space. The owners did not belive me and insisted my boiler was the culprit so after politely incouraging them to clean again (to no avail) We did it for them, at an aditional cost of $500 and proved to them thats all we did (went over like a fart in church) they did pay for this lesson and now have probably the cleanest BB's in town and happy, warm (and alittle poorer & wiser) customers..Robert O'Connor/NJ

Ken D.

Junk

Being diplomatic is easier said than done in this case. Be as polite as you can and if they don't beieve you or take your advice, you've done your part. Otherwise dump them as a customer to save yourself a lot of aggravation.

kevin_5

Tact is the art...

of letting someone else have your way. You don't need to come out and say the house is a pig sty. Just politely ask where the registers are and show them that the cold air can't penetrate a three foot stack of old newspapers.
Kevin

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Brad White_2

When I first was shown my house

with the realtor, I noticed that every room had a vertical quartz radiant heater. Odd, I thought. Must be a cold house. No radiators in sight, either.
A little investigation turned up the facts. The woman I bought the house from made quilts as a business. She piled the quilts atop the standing cast iron radiators to the point that a) they were invisible and b) imparted no detectible heat to the space.

She finally revealed (not realizing her folly) when asked how the utility bills were, that she paid a fortune in gas for heat and her winter electric bill would feed a small country.

(Say "duh" somebody!)

When she moved and took the quilts, my 1873 gem heated nicely and the gas and electric companies stopped by to check the meter seals....

ernie_3

not really AC question

Diplomacy is next to Godliness. Sometimes you have to call a spade a spade. I would have no problem pointing out the 'accumulation' lifes mess. You should say yeah...you should see my basement.

lchmb

just a thought...

Take a fan, place it on one side of the pile. Have the homeowner stand on the other and ask him how well it's working. It may come as a shock to them but point out that the air need's to move in order for it to work....Sometime's people need to see not hear what they are missing...:)