ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area $19,000 back charge

I might add that most of my exsperience is in power plants or substation's (Elec. utility co.) and even at that level we energize equiptment one at a time and let it cook for a while (especially on new install) and even on a complete un-exspected outage of a substation it's heated back up one at a time, but!!!! the feeder leaving to all us customer's when the power comes back on it comes back on, enough said so if you dont want a inrush best to have your own protection installed, for instance at's of god (lighting) recloser trips and come back on, you got a surge and then a inrush of current.
lol blame the electric utility

Straightedge,
It's not on you or your company, unless the disconnects were on, thermostats were installed and left on, prior to phase checking, AND the A/C guys notified you of this, AND you signed a waiver accepting responsiblity for it.

ALL trades acccept responsibility for their work and equipment until final inspection and acceptance by the GC or final customer.

If the power company hooked you up the wrong voltage, and you didn't check it prior to powering up, and you smoked all your panels, lights and ect, are you going to blame the power company?

The A/C contractor should of had his guys check incoming power, double check rotation, and installation prior to enabling the equipment.

He don't have a leg to stand on. He is trying to see if you'll pay for his mistake.

Keep in mind the power outage senario. If they burn up due to a sag, that's on the engineering outfit. You just ran what they spec'd out.

This was mentioned already but it is very unusual for commercial air conditioning equpment to not have time delays on the compressors. These are used because a compressor has a very difficult time starting under pressure and a unit needs time for pressures to equalize before a restart.

Line monitors are not as common but if the equipment was sensitive to the inrush currents associated with power outages, the HVAC company should have had the foresight to install those too.

Someone playing with the thermostat or a momentary power outage would cause a condition where a compressor would stop and try to start again under pressure. this "short-cycling" can burn up compressors.

And if you did cause a momentary (fraction of a second) high voltage condition due to in-rush currents, the heavy windings in the compressors would have handled it fine. It's the microwaves, fire alarm cirucits, computers, PA system, and other solid state devices that would have failed first.

If you want lots and lots of answers from a very knowledgable AC crowd, ask your question here: http://www.hvac-talk.com

Webmaster: hope you don't mind my plugging another board.