Little Behind on Posts this month

I'm a little behind on my posting schedule this month, but that's because I have days like today...

Today is the 2nd day I've had to take off to repair my heater... The first day I called and was told the company worked on Hydroponic Heaters, confirmed with the booking rep that was the case and took the morning off work for the repair.

But when they hadn't called at 8:00 am, I called... to find out it would be closer to 10:00 am... and the tech asked what he was fixing and when I told him it was my hydroponic heater, he told me he didn't do those... so I called the owner... he apologized profusely for the mix up and gave me the name and number of a guy who could fix it for me.   

He was out of town and the 8 other companies I called won't touch my heater. It's great that you can use any repair technician you want to service your heater... but only one company will come out and do the repair (can you say, hello monopoly)... so I had to call our boiler company.

So when the tech gets here, he tells me to just cap the pipe and buy a space heater...

Seriously?

So i have to explain why I'd like heat to actually reach each of my bedrooms and how I will not use a floor space heater to heat my home with a toddler.... so yes, I know I have to check the pipe annually for signs of corrosion... It takes 2 minutes to take the cover off and look at the pipe, its called preventative maintenance... I'm good with that...

So now that he knows that I actually want to fix it, he tells me they don't have the part.... which is funny since I called them last week when I booked the appointment and told them the fan was working but not the heating mechanisms... 

So the Tech tries to do the "let's order it and i'll come back another day routine" because the "small" coil he has is really for a 1 bedroom.. and he wants to do the job correctly.

But when I press, I find out he called the wrong guy about the part.. so he speaks to his boss about the part... They still don't have it, but now, magically the special order coil wont fit in the heater space and give him enough space for the copper pipe. 

We have no option but to use after market parts since boilers aren't too common out here anymore and they have to get all their coils from Arizona... but the tech is now all gun ho about installing the small coil he originally told me wont actually heat my home (FYI, the small coil is larger then the current one up there).

So now I have to call his boss because we have a contradiction. If it wasn't good enough 20 minutes ago, Why is it now? So I call his boss and ask him to confirm the square footage the coil will heat because i'm not paying over $1000 to be cold in the winter... after a long hold, he tells me he will call me back... tech gets a call.... we wait longer...  then I get a call.

Now they found a new coil that's actually three rows deep instead of 2 and longer then my current coil, but because the extra rows of coils is there, it makes for a better after market part then the longer coil that won't fit up there without drywall damage (which I told him was fine to do, but the tech said no) So the deeper coil makes up for the shorter length... ,so they will install that one.

So the tech pulls my old coil out (which is not installed near the fan that actually blows the heat and was literally NOT BOLTED TO the sheet metal enclosure, but was only being held on with 2 brackets laying horizontal instead of vertical and then just taped in place....)

The tech then tells me I could probably sell my old coil on ebay and make some cash since it isn't broken.. 

My first reaction was THEN WHY AM I REPLACING A COIL THAT ISN'T BROKEN????????????????? 

Because it was the wrong coil some handyman taped up in there and the wrong size for our unit, considering it's SMALLER then the one they typically put in a 1 bedroom that has a SINGLE duct.

But in this discover process I had to call the Hoa to confirm the summer boiler temperature since the tech tells me that the boiler is switched in the summer time and that might affect our heaters ability to heat our home... which is stupid because our heater worked fine during our inspection of our last unit which was done 1 day apart from the one we had done on this one... But i called to confirm anyway because its been that kind of morning and the HOA Rep feels REALLY bad for me dealing with all this crap...

But now, I need to call the owner of the company to make sure i need to replace the coil and that replacing and installing the correct coil will give me heat... 

We had to put a thermometer under the kitchen sink to make sure that water was hot. Apparently it gets up to 130 degrees on my tap... so they should be able to fix the heater today, once the guy goes and drives and gets the coil... so now i wait while the guy goes and gets the coil from his shop.

Here's the old coil they removed from the heater, and how it was installed. You can see some sheet metal with a lip... it's supposed to be mounted to the sheet metal, right up in the empty space against the fan... Instead they used a little bracket and then tried to tape up the hoses to get the grill to close...

I couldn't take pictures of the tape since they had to pull that all off and down to look at it and actually see what they had "done" to the heater.