Question for the A/C guys on here.

[Opus]

At the end of 2019 my upstairs wasn't getting much air. I have a single system with separate thermastats for upstairs and downstairs. I was told the dampers weren't working and I needed new ones. Seemed reasonable since they were close to 20 years old. This is what they did from the invoice:

"Installation of Honeywell 2 zone damper controller, two ARD16 motorized dampers" and also "Rebuild ductboard supply plenum to allow proper attachment of dampers and duct work".

The rebuild was because the duct work for the upstairs seems to come off every couple of years. They said the builder put it in such a position there was no way to support it. The rebuild was supposed to solve this issue.

A few weeks ago once it started getting up in the 90's here I noticed the upstairs wasn't cooling well, it would be around 85 by 4 or 5pm. The company that did the work back in late 2019 is no longer around due to I think health issues of the owner. I found a place with a great reputation on our local chat board and they had someone out this past wednesday. As suspected he said the duct for the upstairs had come partially off and i was doing a good job of cooling the attic. He said he could tape it up real good but he had no idea how long it would last. He would get back with an estimate to fix the duct coming off issue. I asked about the dampers and he said they were working fine. I get the estimate by email today and this is what it has.

"Honeywell Motorized Zone damper 14" and Ductboard plenum + reattach to the existing 6 ducts"

Sounds to me like they are wanting to replace my dampers which are only 16 months old and according to their tech are fine. Am I understanding that correctly? I really hate I don't know anything about this stuff.

 

[KStatefan]

It looks like in the repair of the plenum they are going to replace the current 16" with 14" which would require new dampers.

I would ask them why the switch? Did they plan that so there was room for supports?

 

[Opus]

It looks like in the repair of the plenum they are going to replace the current 16" with 14" which would require new dampers.

I would ask them why the switch? Did they plan that so there was room for supports?

That did seem odd to me. It is also worded so it sounds like they are only replacing 1 damper and not both.

 

[SteveMM62Reef]

If you are having problems cooling the upstairs, I definitely wouldn’t let them downsize the ducts. Also you could end up with more airflow noise from the downsizing. What are the Ducts made of? Metal, Duct board, Flex?

 

[Opus]

If you are having problems cooling the upstairs, I definitely wouldn’t let them downsize the ducts. Also you could end up with more airflow noise from the downsizing. What are the Ducts made of? Metal, Duct board, Flex?

The duct work looks like the same thing that you use on your dryer to hook it up to the vent. I guess that would be called flex?

 

[Opus]

It looks like in the repair of the plenum they are going to replace the current 16" with 14" which would require new dampers.

I would ask them why the switch? Did they plan that so there was room for supports?

I was cleaning up my watched threads and realized I had never replied back to this thread to tell what happened. I was finally able to get a hold of the guy that had done the estimate and he had misunderstood what the a/c guy had told him. Apparently he told him what was there and the estimator thought he was saying it needed replacing. What was wrong was just the duct work. He said the previous work that was done a couple of years ago was failing and letting a lot of air out into the attic. He then redid the quote to use the dampers that were there and that cut the bill in half. So that Saturday about 6 guys showed up around 10am and it took around 2 hours with all of them in the attic to rebuild duct work. I asked the guy that appeared to be the boss about actually checking the system. He said that wasn't there job and they didn't know how to do it. They just installed I guess? He said the techs did the actual system check. Well, my house was cooling a little better but it was still getting into the 80's in the afternoon upstairs. I called them back and told the receptionist my issue and she said she would have someone get back with me. A few hours later a guy called back and I explained to him about the unit was still not cooling. I also told him the original tech never really did any checks on the system. The first thing he did was go into the attic and discovered the duct work issue. He then left saying that was the problem and I would get an estimate. The guy apologized and said he should have done a full check-up of the system since I was charged for the original visit. He came out the next day and after about 10 minutes said the system was very low on freon or whatever it is called now. He brought over a big canister and he recharged the system for probably 15 minutes. He checked everything else and apologized again and left. I have a temp gun that I had been checking the temp coming out of the register by my work desk. It had been running around 70, now it was in the 50s. After that my a/c was actually cutting off during the day even when it was over 100. Before it was coming on around 3pm and not turning off until around 11pm.