Hot air coming from Return Air Ducting?

[BigBacardi]

So i got a phone call from a buddy today....A friend of a friend asked me to do a retrofit(on the side)

I dont mind making a shwack load of cash in a short period of time. As dont have any overhead, a couple side jobs per year is a nice little cup of gravy.

But at the present time/situation, I told the guy I was not available.

Personal reasons made me turn the offer down.

So the homeowner gets Company B to do the work. a legit hvac company.

Maybe not legit employees, but a licensed company.

Now I get a phone call from this guy and he says....now my filter is on the bottom(used to be on top).....and i have hot air coming fron the return vents?


OMFG.....Really?

I understand that we are all at dif levels of skill......has anyone ever seen this or heard of such a dumbass mistake?

Obviously he had a counterflow and they installed as upflow!!!!!!!

[matt1124]

Still works though right? Supply is in a central section of the house and each room gets a return. You still get so many changes per hour...

[lynden]

I have never seen it done before, but have found quite a few evap. Coils sitting on top of counterflows over the years. Destroys a heat exchanger pretty quickly.

[HotWaterHeat]

LOL!!!

You ask what kind of ding dong would do this? Well, I am one of those ding dongs.

I installed an air handler the wrong way once. I was just on "auto pilot" and forgot that it was a downflow situation and just plopped the box in the way the writing on the front was.

Still heated the house, just some rooms where warmer than others...

[BigBacardi]

LOL u went back and corrected the situation tho...right?

[LibertyTree]

The last lead I fired installed an air handler upside down. Then proceeded to argue with me saying the directions told him to do it that way. I had to go out on a Sunday and fix it, he didn't even offer to come out with me to do the job, a helper did and got a raise while he got fired. Had he been apologetic and helpful he'd still be employed.

[Ravalyn]

Can't say it was quite that bad, but not too long back I got the return and supply crossed on a residential package unit. Pretty easy to correct but somewhat embarrassing when the homeowners filter shot up out of their return.

[dgussler]

That's the beauty of this field. anything could go wrong lol Not funny at the time though. I've put in a reversing valve in backwards one time. Well, instead of removing the reversing valve and redoing it I put a normally closed set of contacts on one of the wires going to the solenoid lol. And I have had a lot of people ask why didn't I just switch the wire around from O to the B on the thermostat. Well thats fine and dandy until the unit attempts to go into defrost. The board will still call for O. Well on most equipment that is.

[HotWaterHeat]

LOL u went back and corrected the situation tho...right?

Well, yeah. Only after the homeowner brought it up to my attention. It went a little like this: "hey there, you know that new heat pump you installed for us last week? It's working great and all, but it seems like some rooms are much warmer than others. Is there supposed to be air coming out of that big register in the hallway?" And then I was like: "ummm, I am gonna need to come over and check on that"...

That's when I went, DOH!!! It was easy to fix, since the sheetmetal transition I made worked when the unit is flipped around, and there was enough slack in the electrical and lineset that it only took me a few hours to fix. After that I learned to slow down a little, and pay a little more attention.

[heatingman]

I have intentionally done this more then once in split level applications. I outline the game plan in advance and it allways includes alot of retrofit sheetmetal. In every application the system performace increased in spades. The originally were usually upflows that I convert to down flows b/c the majority of air was being forced to make a 180 turn to head into the slab floor in the original arrangement. So to save on all the duct loss, I just re-design it for less utilizing a downflow. But, the registers never saw a change in flow direction.