Right when I think I may be getting caught up on life, something else happens. Since we've had Cutler, I swear, it seems like we've had the worst luck. Both kids happen to be sleeping at the same time, so I'm getting a post in! We've currently been without air conditioner going on Day 10 now. We are supposed to have air again on Wednesday. This time around, we will be without air a total of 12 days if we are up and running when we are supposed to be! By this time around... I mean... we've had air issues since Day 1 on this house. The day we closed, the air wasn't working. We had issues all last summer. I kid you not, we've probably had no less than 50 service calls to our house in the year that we've lived there! I think I posted about it before. At one point, we were getting up about two or three times a night and going to "reset" it outside to keep it running! At the end of last summer, they ended up installing a whole new unit. It seemed to work fine all through the fall and winter. Of course, it wasn't having to work too hard. As soon as it got hot this summer, our air went out. Colt was at work so it was just me and the kids at home. The builder's A/C guy came out...yet again. It ended up being a failed compressor. I was outside with both kids and had Cutler stripped down to his diaper while he was there working on it... hoping it would rush him along. He ordered the part that day but it wouldn't be repaired until the next day. We ended up going to Josh and Brianna's to stay that night. The new compressor seemed to work ok for a few days but it never seemed like it was really keeping up. The house was always a few degrees hotter than it should've been. We ended up calling the A/C company again. They sent someone out on Friday morning. He said the freon wasn't charged right. He supposedly fixed it and had us good to go. False. The next day, it stopped working again completely! By the time I realized it, it was 78 degrees in the house. It was also a Saturday and Colt was working. I got a little irritated. I contacted both A/C contacts we had and got no response. Colt started calling the builder. I ended up calling the A/C guy myself for the first time instead of Colt doing it. I wasn't very nice. I was so mad, I ended up crying to him on his voicemail. When I get mad, I cry I guess! I ended up telling him that if he didn't know what he was doing and didn't know anything about the unit he installed, then he needed to let us know so we could find someone else because this was ridiculous and I had two hot babies. I packed the babies up and headed to Josh's house AGAIN. Colt's mom actually came and picked up Kinley to give me a little break because we weren't sure what the plan was going to be. The A/C guy came out on Sunday morning. The compressor was out again, just a few days later! Long story short, the unit that was originally installed by this company, and the replacement unit, was too small for our house. It was just going to keep burning up regardless of what they did. They ended up saying they needed to put in a new system. At that point, we wanted someone new to handle it. Colt basically told them he didn't really want them working on it anymore. After many phone calls not answered to our builder, he agreed to pay for it. Colt gave him the opportunity to pick who we used. He told Colt to take care of it and do what he needed to do to fix it. This same builder was ZERO help last summer either. He just gave Colt his contractors numbers and Colt has had to do everything since Day 1. Because we needed a whole new system outside and inside, all new ductwork, air intake etc., we had to get our floorpans and get it reengineered to see what system we needed. At first, Colt's mom wasn't sure if we were going to have to pay out of pocket so she thought she could get the equipment at cost. She sent the plans to her manufacturer thinking it would be streamlined. Cutler and I headed to Colt's mom's house to be with Kinley on Sunday. Colt joined us late after work on Sunday night. We stayed there until Wednesday when we headed back to Tyler. While we were at Colt's parents house we were trying to figure out what to do for our living situation. Josh and Brianna had offered for us to stay at their house all along. While you know they are sincere, you still don't want to put people out for a whole week or two. We mentioned putting in a 220 plug at our house and them bringing their RV to our house for us to stay. There was just a time issue on getting an electrician out, and they were headed to Vegas and couldn't bring the RV till they got back. Colt's mom happened to have 4 portable units sitting at her house not being used that she hadn't thought about. They thought they would cool our house enough to make it livable. Colt headed back to Tyler early Wednesday morning to get busy getting them all installed. We followed a couple hours later. When I got there with the kids it was still pretty hot. I think it was 85 in our house. By bedtime, I think it was 78-80 degrees or so. We decided to try to sleep there that night. Colt ended up going to buy 2 additional units (that were later taken back). He put one in Kinley's room and cooled her room because she wanted to sleep in it. Our room was too hot so Colt, Cutler and I camped out in our living room under the fan. It was a bad night. Kinley ended up getting hot, coughing, saying her ears hurt and threw up a little in her bed. Colt was ready to pack it up and head to Josh's house. He looked like he was about to punch a wall at one point. We toughed it out the rest of the night after Kinley got rested. The kids and I spent most of the day Thursday at the house while Colt was working. By that afternoon, it still wasn't cooling down much so Colt had me turn off all the portable units. We packed our bags and headed back to Josh's, where we've been since. On Thursday, we were under the impression that our equipment was pretty much ready, but we found out that the engineers had actually JUST started looking at our plans. It had basically been a wasted week. I got a little fed up and ended up calling someone locally. I told the receptionist our sob story. The company's truck was actually parked at our neighbors house. They were going to get someone out Friday at lunch. I think she felt bad for me because she called me back 5 minutes later, and they were headed straight to our house from our neighbors. Their A/C guy took one look at our unit and said it was too small and the builder or contractor must've tried to save a few hundred dollars. He contacted their comfort specialist who headed straight over from another job about an hour later. He took notes, took pictures in our attic of the bad install we had and sent everything over to the engineers. He contacted me the next day at around 9am with a quote for $13,500. We had until lunch to give them the go ahead. If we said yes by lunch, they would have us running by Tuesday. If we waited, it would be later. They also said that if we could've called them on Monday, they would've already had us running! We would've had air. We also would not have had to cancel Kinley's 3rd birthday party that we had planned on having at our house on June 9th! Colt said he felt like he had been kicked in the nuts. When we sent the quote to the builder, his tune of doing whatever we needed to do quickly changed. He didn't want to pay. He wanted to be sure he would be reimbursed by the original A/C company. Of course, the original A/C company, couldn't afford that. Colt (while working) ended up on the phone with both of them for 1.5 hours or so on Friday morning. Colt gave them until lunch to come up with a plan. They wanted to install a new unit themselves. They could uninstall everything on Tuesday. Then they wanted to install the new system on Wednesday with the manufacturer overseeing and inspecting it. We were both so mad. Basically, the builder sat and did nothing for a week, BUT when he was going to have to pay, he makes stuff happen within a couple hours. This builder is our neighbor too by the way! Neither Colt or I wanted to go with this plan. We don't trust them. The A/C guy said that he didn't do the original install and that he contracted it out. However, he had been coming to our house for over a year to "repair" our A/C so he knew their were issues and had done nothing to resolve it. I think it says something about his character. Either that or he's just an idiot. Our hands were kinda tied. We were afraid that if we used the company that we wanted to, we would have to pay out of pocket. Then we would end up having to take them to court to try to recoup our cost and possibly not even win because they were "offering" to make things right. We ended up agreeing to let the original A/C company install a new system. We might hire a third party to inspect their work though after all we've been through! Hopefully, what they say is true and we are really up and running by Wednesday. We didn't pick our builder since the house was completed when we bought it, but I definitely know a builder we wouldn't use! This many days without air and this many issues on a new house over the last year is ridiculous. I guarantee you if we were the builder's family or grandkids, we would've have had to have been without air this long. I'm pretty sure I'm going to hold a grudge against our neighbor! Kinley's actual birthday is tomorrow so maybe we'll get A/C for her birthday the next day! It's sad because she has said every single day that she wants to go back to our house. We keep explaining to her that it's hot and our house is "broken." I'm ready to go back too though! After scrambling and looking at different options for her party that got cancelled, we ended up just postponing it until this coming weekend when we SHOULD be back in our house! Saying this has been a mess is an understatement. We were actually considering putting in a swimming pool. Now, we are waiting just a little while and making sure we want to stay in our house after our air gets fixed!
No comments:
Post a Comment