The Heat Pump Pictures

Darn, I forgot I had pictures of the repair.  So for what it's worth...

Jeff, the repair manager called me before the repair and said he had good news.  The supplier (who aparently controls warrantee replacements), had said they didn't have the specific "Thermal eXchange Valve" (TXV) available for my unit, but that he "bitched and complained" and they agreed to provide a whole "coil".

I had no idea what that meant, but if the repair manager was happy, that seemed good.  Well, it was more significant than I thought!  The TXV seems to be that little gold colored thing in the center.  The "coil" is the entire guts of the inside unit!

Really, they took out everything!

And here is the new (for free after 6 year's use) replacement!

The guy on the left is the repair manager.  The guy on the right is the "so-called" repairman.   HE didn't have a clue about what to do.  The repair manager kept teaching him every step of the way!

And if I had not called the repair manager with concerns about repairguy, repairguy would have tried to do all that work and messed up royally!  Note the Repair Manager is doing all the work.  Even the heavy lifting!  

The replacement units are not IDENTICAL to the original ones.  He had to cut away some side sheet metal to make it fit.  But HE knew about that and repairguy didn't...  I can only imagine (with shudders) what repairguy would have struggled to do to make it fit.  Hammerring maybe?

The replacement unit didn't fit to Repair Manager's satisfaction.  Out it came for more shaping....

Then back in and Repair Manager was happy.   And if he's happy, I probably will be happy...

And to my surprise, there was welding involved!  And guess who did it.  Quite frankly, the Repair Manager wasn't letting the repairguy do ANYTHING important.

Welding going on.  I'm surprised the camera could take this pic!

Back outside for replacing the coolant, even THEN Repair Manager was doing all the work while repairguy stood around not paying attention.  I think I could reach repairguy's skill level in a week of training!  Well, for one thing, I would pay careful attention...

And again, repairguy is watching while Repair Manager shows how to do basic stuff.  And I mean that.  Is there anything more basic to heating and cooling systems than loading coolant?  On the other hand, repairguy is the one who overpressured my system by 4x in Feb and caused most of currentthe problems...

So Repair Manager left after the mechanical problems were fixed and there were "only" measurement to be recorded.  I'm not sure repairguy knew how to do THAT right.  He kept calling some other people on his phone asking questions. 

BUT, after 3 days of switching the system from heat to cooling, the system is working better than I recall from the initial installation.  There MAY have been problems from the start.  I dropped the temperature from 72 to 68F in 30 minutes.  That used to take an hour.  Raising the temperature is faster, but it happened faster than usual.

I am glad of this repair.

But I think the success was all because I complained to the company first about problems with the previous repair, and then the Repair Manager when I was not pleased with the repairguy they sent.  And Repair Manager did almost all of the work himself!  Let that be a lesson to you...  Demand the best-qualified person to do the job...