Posts Tagged ‘hail damage’

Is your attic overheated? By Dan Jape

Thursday, May 10th, 2012

By Dan Jape, owner Reliable Heating, Air, Plumbing & Electrical

In the past two years, many homes in the Atlanta area have had new roofs installed due to the hail damage and storms that have been epidemic. With these new roofs came a very harmful side effect sold to the unsuspecting homeowner by the various roofing companies: a scorching hot attic. My name is Dan Jape and I am the owner of Reliable Heating & Air and I see hundreds of attics that are in the 150 degree range which puts a serious strain on their a/c systems.

Most homes in Atlanta have a power assisted fan installed that exhausts hot air in the summer and keeps the temperature down in the attic which allows the air conditioning to work properly. The duct work in many homes is actually in the attic and it is very important to keep the heat exhausted so the air conditioner can maintain the proper indoor temperature.
The problem has come from the fact the majority of roofing companies have convinced the homeowner they no longer need power fans, instead replacing them with a venting system called “ridge vents”. A ridge vent is simply a cap that goes over a hole cut along the peak of the roofing shingles. It is supposed to allow super heated air to naturally rise up and out the roof of your home through convection instead of using an electric fan to blow the air out of the attic. This system depends on the correct amount of air entering the attic through the vents in the overhang or soffit. The coolest air available on a hot day is under the eve of the home. While this system can work well on new homes where there is adequate intake vents in the soffit, in most existing home that have had a roof replaced, the roofers simply install the top ridge vent and do not modify or increase the intake vents, which causes an overheating problem causing the air conditioner to struggle to keep up in the summer.
Many times, we see a home that has cooled perfectly in the heat of the summer and then the roofer removes the attic exhaust fan during a re roof and the home no longer cools. The fan is then replaced and the a/c actually works properly shutting off and on at the preset temperature. The attic should be sealed at all can lights, plumbing openings and around attic staircases so the attic fan will not draw conditioned cool air into the attic and an attic fan will save enough in energy costs to quickly pay for itself.
An attic fan can be mounted on the gable of the home or cut into the roof. Both types of fans are controlled by an automatic thermostat that turns the unit on and off at a preset temperature. Solar powered fans are also available to exhaust attics without using any electricity and on certain applications can do a very good job keeping the temperature down in an attic.
One should check their attic fan to make sure the motor and the thermostat are in good working order before the heat of summer arrives and if the old attic fan was removed during a roof replacement, a new fan should be installed. Call Dan Jape today at 770 594-9969 for free advice on all your hvac needs or for information on attic ventilators.

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Don’t be fooled by “Piece Rate”

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

By Dan Jape of Reliable Heating & Air

There are many different ways to find and screen good contractors to perform work at your home. Some people prefer word of mouth and personal referrals. A number of people turn to Internet services such as Kudzu.com or Angie’s List. Others use the yellow pages or other advertising services when compiling a short list of companies to interview.

Whatever method you use, when selecting a heating and air conditioning contractor, one of the most important questions one should ask is whether sub contractors or employees perform the actual work. One would never want to use a company that uses subcontractors, as they are paid a set amount to perform a certain task and they have no vested interest in the outcome or quality of the job. They simply do the work as fast as possible so they can move on to the next job. They gain nothing by taking their time and making sure all the little extras are done properly. In the past, most heating and air companies that specialize in new construction residential installation work would use subcontractors so they could control the labor costs when building new homes. On the other hand, most heating and air companies that service and replace systems in existing homes all employed technicians that work by the hour and work only for that particular company.

Now, there is a new method of paying employees who replace and install heating and cooling systems that is designed to fool the homeowner into thinking they are not getting a subcontractor, but in reality they are. The method of payment is called “piece rate” and it is the most dangerous method of payment arrangement a homeowner could contract for. Under this method, a technician or installer is paid a certain amount of money to install each component or “piece” of equipment regardless of complexity or difficulty. The technician’s goal would to be installing a new system as quickly as possible so as to expend the least amount of time possible allowing them to move on to the next job. This method was developed by the managers of a certain large heating and cooling company as a method to control their costs and insulate the company of the ups and downs of the individual jobs. When a customer asks this company if they use subcontractors, they are told no without any mention of this other payment method. It is a dishonest way of tricking a customer into thinking they are contracting with a company that pays a technician for all the time spent at their home when in reality they are just getting a subcontractor who will not care about the finished product, only the time spent installing it.

One needs to ask their heating and cooling company they are considering hiring if the people installing or servicing their heating and cooling equipment are hourly workers paid prevailing hourly wages to work at their home and are not paid any type of “piece rate” or performance incentitive to perform this type of work. This same type of query would be appropriate for other types of companies one might be contemplating hiring. You will much happier with a contractor who does not employ this type of payment method. If you are unsure of how a company pays it employees, give me a call and I will be glad to give you what information I have from interviewing people who have worked for these “Piece Rate” companies.

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Hail Damage To Your A/C Is Costly

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009

by DAN JAPE of Reliable Heating & Air originally published May 2008

In the past few months, there have been many severe hail storms in and around the Metro Atlanta area and many homeowners have had damage to their air conditioners that is costing them many hundreds of dollars in wasted energy dollars and their insurance companies are misleading them in a effort to reduce their losses.

Your air conditioner remove heat from your home by pulling air through a coil that is very much like the radiator in your car. This coil/radiator has fins made of thin sheets of aluminum bonded to copper tubing and when these fins were struck by hail in the recent storms, they were bent and damaged to the point of reducing and changing the airflow properties of your home’s cooling unit. These fins are critical in the operation and efficiency of your air conditioner and they can’t be repaired. Most of the insurance companies handling these storm damage claims refuse to help the homeowners with these damaged air conditioners due to the fact that it is very expensive to replace these damaged coils.

The outdoor unit and the indoor cooling coils are now a matched set and in 2007 the federal government mandated that all air conditioners be 13 seer or better. This means that insurance companies must spend $2800 to $4000 to bring you back to the point you were before the storm and the fact that the majority of the air conditioners that were damaged were 8 or 10 seer means the homeowner is getting something more efficient than they had before and this is apparently the sticking point with these companies. They don’t seem to mind replacing the roofs or gutters damaged in these storms because they can be repaired with like quality and kind. But the fact that they have to “upgrade” a damaged cooling system has been the source of many problems for homeowners.

Insurance companies have been telling homeowners that this damage is just cosmetic and they can simply comb out the damaged fins with a coil comb and have an air conditioning contractor straighten out the smashed fins. This will never work and will not bring back the cooling efficiency and air flow the unit had prior to the storm. This would be similar to your insurance telling you to beat out the damaged fender in you car with a hammer after a wreck and insisting you be happy with the results.

Except in this case, you will suffer by higher cooling bills and lost cooling capacity for many years to come if these units are not properly repaired and replaced. Do not let your insurance mislead you into not pressing a claim on you air conditioner just due to fact that it still “cools”. If your cooling unit was dented by hail and the fins of your coil were bent, you will never have the same cooling you had before and your insurance company knows this. There is no way to put an exact dollar amount on what it will cost you, but over years of operation, it could be many hundreds of wasted energy dollars. Insist your insurance company treat this damage the same way they are treating your roof, replace it or repair it will a new or like kind product.

As an update to the above blog, we found many of the a/c units that were just combed out like the insurance companies promoted failed completely due to a lack of refrigerant. The razor sharp edge of the aluminum fins cut through and weakened the copper tubing of the coil causing a complete loss of refrigerant. Insurance companies have taken advantage of many policy holders by insisting that this hail damage was not a functional problem, but only a cosmetic problem. But aren’t a number of issues an insurance company deals with simply cosmetic. There job is to restore a customer back to where they were before the damage occurred, not to argue and deny a legitimate claim. The really sad story behind all this is the insurance companies paid for thousands of twenty year old roofs without flinching and many of these claims were simply fraud. The people who had legitimate damage were in many cases turned away. Call me if I can help. 770 594-9969

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