Airwavesllc

To the owner of AirWaves Heating & Air Conditioning:

Dear John,

As I wait for you to call me back (41+ hours now) I'll take the opportunity to document a few new discoveries regarding AirWaves's installation of my A/C system. To jog your memory, I will also recount a few issues that came before.

Saturday morning, as I was heading out to help my son work on his car, my wife goes "Uh-oh. Our renters have a wet ceiling." (Photo 1). So I headed to the renthouse instead (Photo 2), and heaved myself into the attic (Photo 3). There was mouse $#*! everywhere. Never had that before, in this 2018 home. In the year since the filter was replaced, mice discovered the ladder - I mean A/C lines with convenient easy-climb wrap (Photo 4) - leading to the cavernous (to a mouse) opening into the attic (Photos 5,6). Take a close look at the quality of the clear-caulk "seal" done by your guys - it's good for a laugh!

At first I thought the wet ceiling might be due to the drain pump (Photo 7) not working. Perhaps caused by the bare wires sitting in a pool of water (Photo 8)? Or the sheer volume of mouse $#*! it had ingested? Testing in the kitchen sink showed it to be working, so that wasn't it. Nor was the drain line clogged. (But it wasn't clamped to the pump, so sooner or later it would have leaked.)

I got myself into a position where I could watch underneath the air handler. Is there any greater comfort than laying in mouse $#*! and blown insulation with one's weight supported only by 1.5-inch-wide rafters? As the A/C ran, the drips started slowly, then picked up. They were coming from everywhere except where it's supposed to drain. Did you know that the pan under the air handler has NO evacuation mechanism at all? And that the pan's outlet (Photo 9) has an unsealed PVC fitting secured (loosely) on the backside by an electrical conduit fastener (Photo 10)? LOL! Because of that, the pan starts to overflow onto ceiling drywall at less than a half-inch of standing water. Or maybe I should call it "stew", 'cuz with all the mouse $#*!, it was quite soupy. My wife really enjoyed toweling it up, let me tell ya. Took about 10 soaked towels to do the job. It probably had nothing to do with her trip to the emergency room the next day.

The massive air leakage where the air ducts attach did provide a smidge of relief from the mid-July, mid-afternoon attic heat. I'm not sure which contributed more: the crack where the sheet-metal box joins the Lennox unit (Photo 11), or the gap(s) where each duct joins the box (Photo 12).

I killed power to the unit and opened it up. As I started removing screws, I noticed that your guys misplaced the grommet on one hard line (Photo 13). But that was nothing - inside awaited a lovely mess of mouse $#*! and mouse-shredded-insulation (Photo 14). Look closely. See those wires going through the bottom, through high-vibration sheet metal with no grommet? Two problems in one! It serves as both a mouse entrance AND a future short circuit! Just in case there was any doubt as to the skill of the pseudo-electrician who did the work, check out the stripped, unsecured, shorts-in-waiting just above (Photos 15,16). Inside a wet, bare-metal enclosure.

Why was the air handler all wet inside? At first, I thought it might be because the drain is on the uphill end of the handler (Photo 17). But then I realized that there's a pan underneath the coils (Photo 18) whose job is to catch condensation and channel it to the drain. But instead, water was overflowing from the opposite corner (Photo 19). Why? Well, someone thought it would be a good idea to support the unit underneath the drain pan in an area of just-sheetmetal (Photo 20). With time, weight, and vibration, the metal bent and pushed the pan up exactly where it is supposed to be lowest, causing water to flow to the exact-wrong corner of the pan.

Obviously I had to leave the A/C disabled. My renters have been cool about it so far, but they sleep in the hottest room in the house - the upstairs southwest bedroom. During bidding you and I discussed how it was the hottest, and how I wanted to be sure that it was well-cooled. But it flows less air than any other register. I think the soft-sided duct feeding the register, which has two big, heavy, unsupported ducts on top of it and rafters underneath it (Photo 21), is being choked off.

Speaking of ducts, some seem to be choked off in places by the straps that hold them up. Your guys used my attic as a trash can, so I found a copy of the installation instructions. Where they say "support by minimum 1.5-inch wide straps", I don't think they meant for the straps to be rolled up like a homemade cigarette (Photo 22).

It has been a while since the installation, so I'd like to help you remember this one. This one was supposed to take 3-4 days; it took a month. This is the one where your guy stepped through the ceiling drywall; to your credit, you paid for the repair. This was the job where registers were placed visibly crooked to adjacent walls. This was the job where the air handler wasn't secured, so it vibrated off its pad and onto a nearby ceiling light, forcing it down through the ceiling. Remember how it took two visits from your guys to secure the unit? Remember how you paid to fix the destroyed light and surrounding drywall? Trick question - you didn't offer, and I didn't make an issue of it. This is the job where the A/C quit in less than a year, and it turned out to be poorly-secured wiring inside the outdoor unit. I could go on. There are pictures of everything, if it would help.

In all seriousness - you are not a bad guy; I think you will fix what you can. Please prioritize me, and please don't send Fig, who doesn't give a $#*!. He's responsible, directly or as supervisor, for every issue. Please send a guy who is competent and gives a $#*!. Maybe that narrows it down to you.

Ken Sellers