Problem job

I rarely go on service calls at all anymore BUT!!! I could not pass this one up.

A lawyer in a very affluent part of Rhode Island got in touch with me after a series of nightmares.

He bought the house one year ago. The previous owner had installed a new heating system about four years ago. The new owner has had a series of no heat calls since the beginning of November. Six different service outfits have been to the house $450 in parts + labor. Still doing the same thing. The problem as usual is intermittent.

He called according to his records (remember he is a lawyer) 21 different service companies. They told him they did not know anything about his system. He called Honeywell as this is a SmartValve Two Stage system and they tried to help him but he is not very mechanical. They advised him to call the local gas company, which he did, he does not have a contract with them so they would not service it.

Fortunately this is a big house with another heating system for the other part of the house. This is a warm air system and you guys will love this the house he lived in before was forced hot water. He really is turned off with warm air now.

I could not get it to fail for the first 40 minutes I was there. Then it happened the electronic fan timer ST9162C all of a sudden did not put any voltage out to the control module for the ECM DC blower motor. I happened to have one at my center. Just put it in cycled about 15 times seems okay. We will see how it goes.

Since the local utility stopped doing service these kind of situations seem to be occuring more and more. The local plumbers and fitters do not have much training on these systems. Fitters by the way are liscensed to service all gas systems plumbers without the fitter liscense can not do service. There are some very good HVAC guys around which I have now hooked him up with one of them. Hopefully this will be the end of his troubles. He also has AC with this system.

He was by the way very patient and a real nice guy after all he has been through.

I told him the call was FREE because I felt like he got a bad deal and I did not want him to have bad feelings about the trades.

As I was leaving he gave me four tickets to a Celtics game, I took the tickets. He does legal work for the Celtics organization and these seats are at courtside at the Fleet center. The son, son-in-law and grandson are going to enjoy with the old man.