The Beast

[walterc]

Can't wait to replace this system.
It will be a total makeover.

[tunnel_rat]

If I had a dollar for every one of THOSE I've seen....not bad, just depends on the attic. That might be the reason they did that to begin with...but looks wide open from this view.

[DLZ Dan]

It looks like it ate a couple couch cushions, too.

[lilblew]

Looks a lot better than a few of the jobs I have come across here in the Los Angeles county area. I moved back to California from Kentucky three years ago, after going to High School, College, and then running my Fathers’ HVAC business for five years out there. I have to say, and I mean no harm to the great Service Techs and Quality Installers, but for every quality Tech or Installer California has two or three Jerry Riggers and some of the worst in the business if I may say so.
Some of the shoddy work I have seen here accepted as suitable by homeowners, amazes me. It’s like a flex duct jungle, no hard pipe, and double wall flue is almost non-existent. I guess after bidding Gov. Contracts and being held to such a high standard, with both the City Inspectors and Gov. program directors knowing Fed & State codes like the backs of their hands, I should probably come down off of my high horse a bit?
In no way am I claiming to be a sheet metal specialist or a master mechanic, but I can hold my own. The hacks make it so hard for the little guy to gain the home owners trust after they realize they’ve been burned.

[mark beiser]

It never ceases to amuse me that for as long as I can remember, the installation instructions for that style of Rheem/Ruud air handler have had VERY specific instructions for making the supply duct/plenum off the unit the same size as the blower outlet for 36", bare minimum 18", yet I NEVER have encountered one in the field that had a plenum that was anything less than the full size of the cabinet.
A lot of the time, the duct connection tabs are not even bent up.
None of them have the airflow performance they are supposed to.

There have also been tech bulletins about it out for over a decade.

At some point they even started putting a big bright orange sticker on the end of the unit warning about it. I'm not sure when, but when I peek into the plenum with my fiber optic scope, I can usually still read it there on the end of the unit.

At either our local Rheem or Ruud distributors, if you go in and order an air handler, and one of the prefab lined plenums they stock specifically for the size air handler you order, the plenum they supply is the full size of the cabinet...