Job completed for Randy G.

Completion date: February 21, 2018

Location: Shipman, VA

Why did the customer contact us?

The customer contacted us about preforming some non-invasive tests of his main house and guest house.

His main concern in the guest house was they recently had problems with mice at the guest house, and the customer was seeing some insulation show up on his supply registers.

His main house was one system with 3 zones. The main level and second level were always uncomfortable in the cooling season.

Solutions provided:

We discovered mice were making nests near the supply boots in the attic. This was because the boots were not sealed at all, allowing hot air to leak into the attic, very attractive to mice in the winter. This was also prompting them to eat at the flex ductwork in the attic. The recommendation was to replace all the flex duct that was currently in the attic with insulated hard pipe and seal supply boots. This is what we did for the customer.

We also found a nest inside the customer's air handler and found a dead mouse at the electric heat kit. Removed the mouse and debris from the nest. The mice were accessing the inside of the unit through unsealed holes on the coil drain pan when the air handler was converted from being up-flow to horizontal. Sealed holes with thumb gum. Cleaned inside of air handler with disinfectant.

We ran a load calculation for both the main house and the guest house.

After the load calculation, we discovered the electric heat kit was oversized for the guest house. We removed the existing heat kit and installed a smaller one. We also discovered an old thermostat that was inaccurately reading the indoor air temperature, we replaced the thermostat for the customer. This will reduce energy consumption and reduce the static pressures in the ductwork because less airflow is required for the smaller heat kit.

Static pressures in the ductwork were above equipment design, after installing all-new hard pipes we reduced total static by 25% and brought it below the manufactures max allowed operating Static pressure.

Team members on this project:

Alex Laukaitis