Sunday, October 11, 2009

The Heat Pump Works!

OK. It seems like the heat pump guys finally got the thermostat to communicate with the heat pump. It wasn't easy, though.

At first, they insisted on trying their standard thermostat with their standard heat pump for 3 days in a row and it didn't work. The 4th day, the same repair guy arrived with a 2nd repair guy who claimed to have had these problems before and solved them. I was getting pretty tired of all the failed attempts and told them that they either fixed the problem or haul the unit away, reimburse me the whole cost, and I would call another company. Not to my surprise, that seemed to have an effect...

1. I had looked up the Ruud brand of heat pumps on the internet last night and they are not the best. Well, I had heard of them for years and thought they were good. I only chose them because it was so hot in July when the York unit failed, because York said "2 days" and Ruud said "1 hour". At the time, I was desperate; it was 95 in the house!

2. I hoped they (Ruud) would take the unit away so I could change my mind and get a Trane.

3. I didn't think that a different thermostat would solve the problem.

Well, damn, they seem to have fixed the problem with a different brand of thermostat! And while I an not a thermostat expert, I listen carefully and learn well...

We know we see integer degrees on our thermostats. We see 71 or 72 or whatever. It seems that thermostats don't actually function in those terms. They can measure full degrees in full whole numbers (71, 72) or half numbers (71.5) and that is promammable. They thought that might be the problem for over an hour. IOW, the problem might be that that the thermostat was reading full degrees when it should be reading half degrees (something about both heating and cooling reading the same units that caused the problem). But changing that didn't solve the problem anyway.

Finally, they just hooked a different brand thermostat in and it worked perfectly right from the start!

Can you believe that? They fought with a thermostat they knew they were having troubles with and that wouldn't work for three days (they had tried 4 new thermostats). Sure, they wasted their time at it, but they wasted MY TIME, too. The time while they worked and the time I waited. I figure I spent 20 hours this week either waiting for them to arrive or watching them while they were here.

The good news is, that after 3 days, the system seems to be working properly, I have gotten used to the thermostat controls, and the whole house breaker has not tripped once (isn't that curious). That whole house breaker box problem started when the heat pump went bad and ended the day it was fixed (so far). That the heat pump guys say it couldn't be their fault means nothing to me. I'll take coincidence on this matter.

I am quite certain that, somewhere, there are people with the bad combination of the particular thermostat with the particular heat pump from this company who DON'T know their heat pump shouldn't be running all the time and wondering why their electric bill is high.

When I suggested to the repair guys that they should have the company backtrack these situations, they just laughed while walking out the door. A case of "not their problem", I suppose).

Well, mine is fixed... Maybe I should only care about that. But I don't... I think I will email the Jiffy company (the installers) and raise the issue.

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