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| Citywide Heating and Cooling Unsafe practices with work that could have been life threatening Knoxville, Tennessee |
| 9th of Dec, 2011 by User922059 |
| In August 2011, I contacted my home warranty company due to the air handler unit part of my central heat and air stopped working. They sent out Citywide Heating and Cooling. The job was completed while I was at work and when I got home that day and we went to look at the job that was done, there was a piece of what appeared to be black duct tape covering the place that the breakers were previously. I was not very comfortable with the appearance of the work that I was able to see so I placed a second phone call to Citywide Heating and Cooling for a supervisor to come out and review the previous work that was done. The 2nd gentleman that I thought was to be a supervisor turned out to be a lead technician (I found this out well after the main issue at hand). He stated the work was fine as long as you could physically see the breaker box that it was ok. In the 3rd week of November my husband was standing in the kitchen when he started screaming that he could smell wires burning and when you walked into the kitchen you could see a faint fog of smoke. We all were scattering throughout the house trying to see where the majority of the smell and smoke was and found that it seemed to be focused in the kitchen. My husband thought it was the dining room light because it had one bulb that kept going out on it so he removed the light from the ceiling and covered the bare wires with wire nuts and then he put the light on the back porch where it would remain until we could get a new one. While we were all scared about what had happened we were ok with the thought that we had found the issue and removed the light and went to bed. This was the first freeze night in Knoxville for the winter season with a low of 29. We awoke the next morning for work at 4am and it was a low 60 degrees in our home. I figured the batteries in the thermostat had died or were weak and I would just change those, but this did not resolve the issue. So this is when we figured that the burning wires and smoke must have been created by an issue with the heating system. I contacted my home warranty company and advised them that I definitely did NOT want Citywide Heating and Cooling to be the company that was sent out for this. They sent out a new company who basically came just to review the work that was done, when he opened the air handler that the breakers had been taken out of, that is where the fire was. It had burnt one of the duct taped junctions in half and also melted many other wires and the breaker seats inside the air handler. There was also another duct taped junction that was still in perfect condition. All of the wires were hot inside the air handler which was still very dangerous and once the electricity was blocked to the air handler and we could pull the other duct taped junction apart we found that there was no wire nuts/caps used in the junction of wires. It was at that time that my brother informed me that the original repairman that had come out had asked if WE had any wire nuts. I may be wrong on this but I am just thinking that maybe a man who will be dealing with electricity and wiring might need to carry wire nuts on his truck and if he does not have them, he may want to go pick some up. Since this is not my expertise I was not aware that duct tape has metal running through it so the duct tape it’s self was a dangerous conductor to cause a short in the wiring with a possible resulting fire. Although the problem has been resolved and my entire heat and air unit had to be replaced I was very lucky that the home warranty company covered the majority of the charges. I have however made contact with the secretaries at Citywide Heating and Cooling in order to get a return call from a supervisor or manager as I have all intentions of placing a claim against their insurance due to the shoddy job that was done and the remaining balances being covered that had to come out of my pocket. We lost time from work, went 3 weeks with no central heat (the warranty company did however provide us with reimbursements for portable heaters), we were required to pay a deductible to the home warranty company as well as a charge for upgrading the electrical for the new system. The new filter grate for the return that was installed in my wall was smaller than the old one so we have to hire someone to come and fix the drywall and we had just painted so this has to be fixed and painted. I have been advised by my home warranty company that Citywide is licensed, bonded, and insured so I have all intentions of filing a case with their insurance company for reimbursement however have not been able to get anyone from the company with any information to call me back yet. All of my calls to them have been ignored. |
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