The HVAC Struggle at Mezzacello
A technician with Advanced Aire Heating and Cooling topping off the Freon in the new AC units
When we bought the property here at Mezzacello Urban Farm we knew we were buying a 156 year old house with two vacant plots of land to the south and a lot of issues. Actually, they were less issues and more like subscriptions! But I digress. This blog post is about the HVAC struggle at Mezzacello.
No Furnace in Winter, No AC in Summer
We knew upon buying the house that the furnaces were old and not very efficient. This house has two furnaces, one in the cellar and another on the second floor. The house also came with the shells of two AC units, the copper long ago stolen while the house sat abandoned.
The downstairs furnace died two years into purchasing the house. We wanted to get it fixed, but we felt our energy would be better spent building the farm and growing the brand. The house had working gas fireplaces on the ground floor, so we lived all 1868 in the house from 2016-2023. It was sometimes frustrating, and always way more expensive!
I can remember days where Rick and I were GRATEFUL to get to go into work. There was heat there and we didn’t have to huddle next to the fireplaces. We never took it for granted and we didn’t complain. We had a vision and we were determined to see it through.
The summers were harder. It is an old brick house with 10 foot ceilings. That height helps keep the house cool, but 19th Century cool, not 21st Century cool. This year we bit the bullet and started a major renovation of the house. This will include full electrical overhaul and entirely new furnaces and AC.
We Didn’t Know It Didn’t Work
We had the AC installed in late December, so we never tested the AC to see if it worked. Spoiler alert: It didn’t. Also, we didn’t fully understand how to program the thermostat. I feel silly saying this, but it is a state of the art system and there are a lot of subsystems that can be programmed.
By mid-June we knew there was a problem. So we asked the installer to come out and look at the system. They discovered two big problems:
The units were WAY underpowered (110V each rather than 220V each)
The units were leaking freon
We addressed both of those issues. Then the water started pooling in the furnace closets and on the heat exchangers. This was an issue with the fresh air return and the drain for the house. We are talking the ORIGINAL HVAC drain from 1992. It was buried from disuse and not draining.
So now the AC units work, and they don’t create lakes of water any more. Just in time to remove them and store them so we can build the new classroom/kitchen addition and the side porch of the house. Never a dull moment!
