Tamara chose a local HVAC company to send someone out (I don't know if she consulted reviews, or just threw a dart at a board with company names on it, or what -- she just said she'd do it, and did it).
The guy was here for about ten minutes before he informed us that:
- The unit was nearly out of coolant;
- The leak seemed to be at the evaporator, which can't just be replaced as a stand-alone job, and therefore
- We'd need a new AC unit, guesstimated costs $6k to $9k.
Not the kind of thing you like to hear, of course.
But a friend of ours recommended a different HVAC guy, because for an expenditure that size it's worth paying a little extra to make sure you're not getting screwed.
The second guy came out. Spent more than half an hour, the last ten minutes of which was crawling under the house to look at the duct work. His conclusion:
- The unit was in fine shape.
- It was full of coolant and there was no leak.
- The coil was freezing up because the duct work was old, partially collapsed in two places, with several holes, so a lot of the cold air was going under, rather than in, the house, leading the unit to run a lot more than it should, leading to the coil freeze. And therefore
- We needed new duct work, guesstimated cost of $2.5k.
And it ended up being $1.7k. He made it clear as of the guesstimate that that was the high end.
And since we hired him to do the work, there was no fee for the initial service call.
Now the house is cool and the unit isn't running all the time.
And we saved at least $4.3k by not just trusting the first guy's claims and forking over.
Not the first time that kind of thing has happened. Back In St. Louis, a chain shop did our annual car inspection and said we needed $800 worth of repairs to pass. A second mechanic recommended by a friend said that was BS. The only thing we needed was a new headlight (the old one's cover had deteriorated with time). $40 parts and labor.
Get the second opinion!
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