Swingman wrote:


"Mark & Juanita" wrote

Swingman wrote:

Despite the need for a good design and ductwork, HVAC has a good bit of
'plumbing" involved as well ... Freon lines, drainage, both primary and
backup for the evaporator coils/air handler units, which are often in
attics where they can cause a great deal of damage when not designed
properly fail/get stopped up. While these guys aren't plumbers, they
still
need a lot of the same skills for proper installation.


Yeah, like making sure things are all hooked up. When we moved into
our
first house, friends helping us move told us there was a puddle of water
in
the guest bathroom. Turns out the A/C installer (or plumber, neither
would
admit to whose job it was) failed to connect the A/C drainage line to the
bathroom drain -- so all that June Dallas humidity was dripping into our
brand new cabinet and running onto the floor.

I can probably go a good way to solving the mystery for you:

HVAC indeed ran the drain pvc. The sheetrockers covered it up behind the
drywall (by accident? ... maybe, but it could also depend upon whose
countries soccer team won the day before in the playoffs). The plumbers
never saw the drain line because it was behind the sheetrock and under a
cabinet/vanity to boot, and it is not the responsibility of the plumber to
know/guess what the AC guys did ... not in this day and age, in any event.


In our case, the condensate pipe was not covered by sheetrock, it was just
sticking out the wall; an equivalent attach point on the bathroom sink
drain was similarly setting there. The only problem was the intervening air
gap of about 8 inches and an elbow that, for some reason, the water failed
to follow instead of flowing out the pipe onto the vanity floor.


Lay the blame as follows:

The builider for NOT supervising the work and not being experienced
enough,
or caring enough, to anticipate the problem;

Absolutely. Builder went to great lengths outlining their quality
construction and attention to detail. Seems like that's kind of a big
detail to miss. If I were a builder, I'd have a checklist of items prior
to closing out a site. Verifying A/C drainage would be one of the things
on that checklist.


the sheetrockers for being
careless and doing shoddy work;

In this particular case, I can't fault the sheetrockers

the HVAC contractor for not going back and
insuring that all drain lines were in place before firing up the AC units
for the first time.


Yep

BTW ... this is a common rookie mistake. And one, as a builder responsible
for supervising ALL work, I confess to having made myself. But most good
builder's only do it once ... at least so far!


This was a name-brand builder, they should not have made this mistake.
OTOH, all of the AC units in the whole neighborhood failed multiple times
in the immediate years after the warranties ran out. Turns out the builder
went with the low bidder (explains the hook-up issue) who had purchased a
warehouse full of closed out A/C units and who failed to match inside and
outside units during installation. Installer just went to the warehouse,
grabbed a compressor and condenser and took to the job site. Builder
narrowly avoided a class-action lawsuit (which I normally abhor, but in
this instance was certainly justifiable) because the organizing group was
collecting legal funding around Christmas time.



--
If you're going to be dumb, you better be tough