I am cold and I am frustrated!!!

I paid over $5000 to install a new HVAC in my house in 2012. I pay ~$150/year to belong to a "club" of the business that installed it. Among benefits of being in the club are I will get two maintenance checks each year at no cost and if I call asking for a diagnostic visit in between maintenance checks they will send a technician within 24 hours. I was supposed to have a maintenance visit and the tech came Friday. I told him the heat had been keeping the house warm but for the past few weeks it would shut off every few minutes and restart in less than a minute. It did not do that the first winter after installation.

So he said it is doing that to keep from overheating because of low air flow and mentioned the air filter was moderately dirty and advised me to keep my intake and output ducts clear (which I already do). And he remarked as leaving that the technician who will do a maintenance visit will check the outside unit, so I guess he thought his visit was a diagnostic one. Or maybe he is just lazy.

He left and the heat was working without the frequent restarts. But Saturday morning the whole damned unit was not working. It would not heat nor would the fan blow even when I switched it to 'continuous'. Their website says they offer service 24/7 so I called the answering service and told them the unit was not working and my house was cold. Several hours later I called again to make sure they had my telephone number correct. Nothing.

About six hours ago I thought perhaps a breaker was tripped and went into the garage to look at it. The circuit breakers were normal but I did notice that he had taken the air filter out of the air handler and left it lying on the garage floor and the ~two inch access panel for the air filter had been propped open with a small wrench. I thought that rather odd and do not know why he did that. I do not know if leaving that open was intentional or careless.

Then I remembered when he initially entered the garage he said there were birds in the garage. I saw two small birds that had come into the garage through a space above the garage door where I have a missing roller clamp. About the same amount of space as the opened access panel on the air handler. I hope I don't have a damned bird somewhere in my air handler or in the duct work.

I have emailed the owner. Who knows if he reads emails on weekends or ever. Maybe, just maybe, there is a valid reason that the technician didn't call or show like he had a wreck on the icy roads or something the answering service didn't know about. I will call the answering service again in a few hours and see if there is a technician available but for now I sit in layers of clothing and I am cold and irritable. I gave my son a sleeping bag to sleep in but I will just have to suck it up and be cold, I suppose. It is 25 degrees F outside now and 48 indoors and we have an incoming snowstorm Monday that will have the temps in single digits.



[/rant]