A few days ago, I wrote about how our air conditioning problems at home were due to a crushed duct. While investigating the repair, they discovered we had asbestos ducting. This let to our getting a quote for remediation work (under $1K). I though I would bring folks up to date on what’s happening.
The abatement folks (who are coming on Tuesday) are going to pull out all the ducting to play it safe. Our HVAC Contractor will be coming the next day to put in all new ducting, fix the blower motors for the attic fans, and fix the drain pan under the unit. This work will be about $5K on top of the remediation (all together now: ouch!). There is a saving grace, however. There are new HVAC code requirements from the California Energy Comission that require insulated and sealed ducting that can pass a pressure test. The Consortium for Energy Efficiency estimates that quality installation of HVAC systems can reduce energy consumption by as much as 35% and peak demand by as much as 25%. In our case, our contractor is estimating that this should cut the energy costs for cooling in half. Given that last year we had DWP bills over $500/month, the work will pay for itself quite quickly.
We discovered one other oddity. Wednesday night, one of our thermostats went wonky. It was showing the system as on, but it wasn’t kicking the system on. I even tried turning the fan on directly, and nothing happened. We called out our contractor. Turns out there is a software bug in the thermostat, and it sometimes goes out to lunch. The only way to reset it is to raise the temperature set point manually, and then lower it until it kicks on. This activates a safety override. In our case, it came back to working once the house cooled down.
Folks may notice I’m not overly upset about the expenditure. First, that was savings accounts are for. Secondly, I’ve learned (over time) that with houses, there is always something you miss in the inspection that comes to bite you, to some extent, in the first year. That’s just how life goes sometimes, and you have to roll with the punches.
