I’ll call this post “The
Adventures of Installing New HVACs.”
Last night’s post on “HVAC Condensate Problems,” generated a number of emails
to me as comments, requests, or questions.
MARK’S INTRO
I referred
this set of questions from Mark Day to David Robinson. What was going on in
Mark’s tier turned out to be caused by noonstandard installation of an HVAC
done several years back. Here is the
intro by Mark and the Q & A exchange between Mark and David:
Last Friday, a
Quality Air guy - Oleg - turned off our new console unit because he found
condensation on the warm water line & thought our cold & hot lines
could be crossed. The big problem was that hot water was bleeding into the
chiller for the whole riser.
I was sure the problem
was not in our new carefully installed unit. And after closing our
valves, the problem in the whole tier continued so…seems not [caused by
Mark’s console HVAC].
But the console is still
off & we can't cool our study. Oleg said a couple of days ago when I
saw him in hall that they were still checking & hadn't found the
crossed lines.
Talking to Hollis in the
elevator, he outlined the clogged drains issue you [Karren Alenier] discussed.
So maybe the problem
really is clogged lines? Or both that & crossed lines?
MAIN QUESTIONS:
1) Have you heard about
the crossed lines issue?
David: Yes,
I am familiar with it.
2) Have other apts. had
their units' valves shut off?
David: My
understanding is that all of the apts. in your tier will be shut off and
brought back on line one at a time until the fan coil with the crossed lines is
identified. This is normal procedure.
3) When will we know
that our risers/tiers lines have been cleared & we can safely run our
HVACs?
David: Management
will notify you. Of course when the misconnected fan coil is identified the
four pipes will need to be drained and the fan coil connected correctly.
Since Quality Air is already in the building the work should be completed
rapidly.
4) You mention five lines
have been cleared: out of how many total that need to be cleared?
David: The
five lines were selected based on the number of condensate pans overflowing in
the tier. The original plumbing blueprints for the building are being studied
to determine the total number of condensate drains. I suspect that they
all need to be cleared.
5) Do they have a schedule
as they did with windows so we'll know when ours is done?
David: When
the total number of drains is determined a schedule will be developed and
distributed.
FOLLOW UP
David told me that there
were six engineers working on the problems in the building today along with
some Quality Air employees. Here is the finding and fix as described by
David:
“The offending unit turned
out be a two pipe unit installed perhaps as long as 4 years ago and
jury-rigged to connect to the 4 pipe riser. It is currently isolated from
the system and will be replaced with the appropriate 4-pipe unit by Quality Air
early next week. Having been installed years ago, the history on who had
installed it is lost.”
David also said, “In the
separate issue of clearing condensate lines, the engineering staff working with
Denzel continues to remove the blockage from additional lines. They have
been too busy to review the blue prints so no total number of lines is yet
available.” [The number of lines is not equal to the number of tiers in our
building, Typically, more than one tier feeds into these condensate lines.]
Also one other thing to
know about the floods (dripping) from the condensate lines is that these wet
ceilings/walls are more likely to happen on the lower floors.
Thank you, David Robinson,
for volunteering your time to sort out these problems with the army of engineers.
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