Turd polishing.

[mark beiser]

Found this turd of a Trane XL16i system a couple of weeks ago, installed just under 1 year ago.
Went back and polished the turd a little today, the customer didn't want to buy enough turd polish to make it really shine.

Starting ESP= 1" wc with NO FILTER.

5 ton system with a 24" long ductboard supply plenum.
Most of the ducts made 2 90º bends off the plenum, were hung hapazardly, and there were ductboard triangles everywhere.


I hate when wires are draped all over, and the gas line runs up in front.


Yeah, a single 20x25x1 filter rack for a 5 ton system....that works GREAT with a pleated filter!


Super awesome line set.


Mastic slathered all over the outside of the duct connections, but NONE where the air actually leaks from these POS start collars.


No mechanical fasteners for the ductboard supply plenum to the coil, just tape and mastic.
My Bosch multitool with a scraper blade made REALLY short work of cutting it loose.


Back corner of the drain pan hung lower than the float switch in front....and lower than the drain outlet.


Vent pipe not twist locked together, or even fully pushed together.


continued...

[mark beiser]

They reused the hangers for the old system, even though none of them came anywhere close to lining up correctly.


I'm sure this will never be a problem.


Or this.


Installed a 4' lined metal plenum, rerouted, straightened and decompressed all of the supply ducts, replaced ductboard triangles with metal wye fitting, removed many many bends, installed metal elbows for the ducts that did not run straight into the sides of the plenum, rehung the unit with 24 gauge straps that are straight, cleaned up the line voltage and control wiring, cleaned up the refrigerant lines, reconnected the vent pipe properly, rehung the emergency drain pan so it will actually work in an emergency, and removed a mystery duct and boot we found laying off behind the unit blowing air into the attic.




Ending ESP with rock stopper fiberglass filter = 0.65" wc (0.35 return, 0.3 supply) The return ducts are still under sized, as is the filter rack.

We wanted to do more, especially for the return, filter, and gas line, but the customer didn't want to buy more turd polish.

[ACFIXR]

"and removed a mystery duct and boot we found laying off behind the unit blowing air into the attic."

You really screwed up that job now...............it officially went from ducts in "conditioned space" to ducts in un-vented attic space. At least a 25% capacity penalty.....

[billg]

Man, you must have really angered the Gods to end up with that one. I can't fault the customer too harshly for their reluctance to pony-up for the copious amount of turd polish necessary to bring it up to an acceptable luster, seeing that turd polish costs more than platinum. Nothing else compares to being up to your elbows in turd polish, especially in an attic.

[dandyme]

that mystery duct was the installers friend, got to be comfortable doing that high quality install

[coolwhip]

Nice improvement!

[ar_hvac_man]

Nice repair.

Ive seen many hung with duct strap. Dont like it. Cant stand flex either especially when theres room for metal

[tunnel_rat]

Polished about as much as possible I'd say....nice

[socotech]

Sometimes if I polish a turd too much, it turns into diarrhea.

[billygoat22]

Just mix some stop leak in it, that'll solidify things some...

[qssfl]

I wonder what the static would have been without that mystery duct dumping air into the attic???

nice clean up BTW!!!

[AtticAce]

They must have stock in the electric company.

[Air Movers]

forget the adapter for the bvent, forget zip ties on lineset, forget about the float switch shutting that down, usually don't need screws in bvent at least the manufactuters say you don't