re: Help! Insurance Question-Leaking Attic AC

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If the AC guy is coming out there tomorrow, I would wait until then to see his course of action. Give the man a chance to fix what he wronged. If he's a licensed contractor he will have insurance that will cover all of this. It will not get fixed tonight and the only thing you're going to do is wear yourself to death. Everything can be fixed, it just cost money. Hopefully his. Good luck with all this I know it's stressful.

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I appreciate you saying this. I don’t mind giving the guy the opportunity to make it right. The main thing that I worry about is my wife with her health issues. This AC guy is aware since we used him to address the mold issues with cleaning and installing the UV lights. Too many people(including myself at first) don’t take mold seriously because it doesn’t affect them that much. My wife is in that small percentage that it does affect greatly. Hopefully, he stands behind his work and will fix this so that my wife doesn’t have to worry about a moldy home.

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CLUE

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Comprehensive loss underwriting exchange. Basically anytime you get an insurance quote your information is sent to a third party vendor (Lexus Nexus is a big one) and they send a full report of your entire claim history. Not paid claims, all claims and all information on them.

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At its worst 75%. This was partially what the HVAC guy was out to address. The situation was that our pan was discovered to be rusting so we needed to have it replaced. Mold in the HVAC unit due to my wife’s sensitivity was the other. We do have 2 units. One upstairs and one downstairs. 1900ish square foot house. The upstairs unit was replaced 7 years ago with a larger unit. The HVAC guy said that the return duct going into the air handler wasn’t big enough and that was making the air handler work too hard this causing the unit to leak into the pan causing it to rust. On the supply side, it was determined that the plenum had to be replaced and all insulation inside the unit due to it being rusted out soaking wet. We installed a Reme Halo unit on that side to help with the mold issues. Of course, everything was cleaned prior to installation. This was supposed to keep our unit running as efficiently as it possibly could. Still not exactly sure why the high humidity though. Most days it’ll stay in the 50-65% range during the summer.

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Understood. If the HVAC was upsized with no change in duct size, including the return duct, can see why humidity issues would exist. Good he is fixing/fixed that.

Do you have long run times on the upstairs HVAC during the hottest months of the year or does the unit short cycle, meaning it frequently starts and stops? A oversized HVAC does usually result in higher humidity levels. The blower speed in the air handler can be lowered to reduce air flow over the cold evaporator coil helping to further reduce humidity - your tech I’m sure knows this but you can discuss with him, to see if a reduced blower speed in the furnace-air handler is advisable. Blower motors are often set at the highest speed at the factory, but in humid environments the speed should often be reduced to help reduce humidity.

And when running your HVAC upstairs, do you keep it in the “Auto” mode (condensing unit + blower fan shuts down when set point temperature reached) or “On” mode (condensing unit shuts down but blower fan continues to run when set point reached). If the later, that can result in an increase in humidity.

FWIW, my BIL is a retired plumber and in his career he had a couple water heater issues at clients houses that resulted in water damage to ceilings when he was working to replace them. His insurance paid for repairs to the homeowners house.

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I can understand your concern and I hope your contractor makes this right. I can understand that health concerns are paramount which changes the pressure. Have you considered an installing a dedicated make up air dehumidifier? Dry filtered air to create a positive airflow with low humidity can kill wold spores.

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Yes, we have considered this as an option but when we discussed this with our HVAC guy he didn’t believe it was necessary. At the time, we were more concerned with having clean air blowing throughout the house instead of moving mold throughout the house so we decided to just add the UV lightning along with the other changes he recommended. We may discuss this again, but our main concern is going to be water damage repairs, preventing the leak from reoccurring, and preventing mold growth.

Any update on the situation?

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Any update on the situation?

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Really not a whole lot to update. AC guy tried to crawfish a little bit by saying all they did to my drain line was insulate it. He reluctantly agreed to help out with the repairs. The AC guy and my BIL(who is a local contractor) talked later that day and the AC guy told him that he would take care of the repairs. BIL is supposed to ride out tomorrow to come take a look and see what exactly needs to be done. We still don’t know the extent of the damage until we get behind the walls but after peeling back some insulation in the attic it doesn’t appear to have been leaking for over a month as first feared. I’ve still got the insulation peeled back from the Sheetrock to help it dry out. I haven’t been up there today to see if it has dried out. All in all I think it’s going to be okay as long as we don’t start seeing mold growing.