House calls are my favorite kind of assignment.
I meet many people, some welcoming, others just want you done with work, and off you go.
I always try to strike up a conversation with my clients to determine how much they know about their AC equipment. Some are quite knowledgeable, others very hands-on, but most just don’t care what you are doing so long as you mind your business and leave. This past week, I attended two house calls that required looking into their ducts. Sometimes when problems arise with AC at home, they concentrate on one area that pushes the clients to seek help with indoor comfort. When this happens, we run out of replacement parts fast and have to put clients on hold for a few hours or even days, if not weeks. Since I have been an HVAC technician for a while and understand the behavior of HVAC units and air conditioners, I can easily tell what’s wrong by listening to the machines run, checking the ac filter, or observing certain parts of an air conditioning system. My last house call was about inspecting the ductwork, and I got more problems than I anticipated. The client had low air quality because he tried to pull off a DIY with the air ducts and installed multiple branches and long duct runs when renovating the house. The result was little air reaching the rooms. So I had to determine an action plan, the bill for bigger duct sizes, and install them. Unfortunately, we don’t have the right size in store, so as a retail HVAC company, we had to order and wait before I attended to his ac repair needs. This is what happens when you ignore signing up for home services, cutting corners, and having to call an HVAC professional to fix something HVAC maintenance would have handled.