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Advice needed Homeowner with a Comfortmaker furnace / Smart Valve trouble
QUESTION:Looking for some advice on how to handle this. Our Colorado home is about 5
years old, the builder used Comfortmaker for the natural gas furnance and
A/C.
I'll put the details at the bottom - but in a nutshell, after weeks of
problems, a HVAC technician diagnosed the Honeywell Smart Valve as the
problem and replaced it to the tune of about $500 USD. The advice I'm
asking for is how hard do I complain to Comfortmaker and/or HoneyWell in
asking them to reimburse some of the expense?
I really want to be reasonable - as an engineer, I know stuff fails. But a
failure in less than 4 years strikes me as something the manufacturer should
address as their problem.
I did NOT call an authorized Comfortmaker dealer. Being a tad "disturbed"
by losing heat in the middle of a cold winter night, I called HVAC dealers
that were close by until I found the first one willing to come quickly.
Will Comfortmaker give me grief about not using one of their authorized
dealers?
Here are the details, as brief as I can make them:
- 6-8 weeks ago, we notice furnace "on", blowers blowing - but air is cold.
Go downstairs and notice gas burners didn't light. Turn furnance off/on @
main switch (not thermostat) and burners light, things work for a few days
- then about every 5 days, it happens. House cools, furnace kicks on,
burners don't light. Only way to get things back on is to cycle power. [
As problem progress, I notice I have to leave master switch off, longer and
longer to get things to fire up again. At first, I could flick switch off/on
within a minute. Last time, I had to leave power off about 15 mins.]
Since the problems occurred at night, since we live where it's cold, since
we have babies in the house - when the problem happened, I was interested in
fixing it fast, not diagnosing.
- called technician one (after I had cycled power) - he couldn't see
anything obvious. Furnance works OK for about a week.
- called technician two, (after I had cycled power) who noticed the "Hunter"
brand set-back thermostat and said that was the problem and we put back the
builder Honeywell thermo. Furnance works OK for about another week.
- last week, problem occurs during the day , the technician diagnoses the
Smart Valve. And replaces it the next day.
Again - looking for some guidance on how to act reasonably as a homeowner
through this.
ANSWER: Model & Serial PLEASE....
....it tells us alot!
(less then 5 yrs? install date?) Depends.....need model & serial numbers. Here's a problem, 6-8 weeks ago and you wait till it breaks completely?
(not smart, beings you have children) First, we need model, serial, & install dates.
Second, the unit kept acting up yet you ignored getting it looked at.
Third, depending on model...it may have had a problematic valve...
.....post numbers and I can tell you.
Either way, if it's a depect issue......they don't owe you for emergency
service rates, beings you kept putting it off.
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