Any HVAC Guys here?

Mad Mike

Mad Mike

Well-known member
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Got a gas furnace nearing end of life. Looking for a replacement, nothing special. 80,000btu, in Burlington.

Easy access, unfinished basement.

PM to discuss if that's your game.
 
Shop around and hopefully you can find a deal. We got a Lennox furnace and AC installed last summer for $5K all in. Yeah, it was a "special" price by a new company who was looking to build Google reviews, sure, but I know they still made money on the deal as the mark-up on HVAC equipment is huge.

Is it 99.9% efficiency? No, but it's 98% or something like that, and with the previous furnace (and AC) being a the 1987 original that was something like 65% efficiency, it was a massive step up - it cut our gas consumption by over $150 per month in the winter and around $100/month in electricity in the summer...and the AC actually keeps up, unlike the original unit which would fall behind on the hottest of days.

Spending another $5+K to get a higher efficiency furnace to save another $5/month or something like that didn't make sense from a payoff standpoint, ditto another bunch to get a slightly higher end AC to save on a few dollars more a month in electricity.

I registered the warranty and took the 10 year parts vs 5 year parts and labour. I kind of figured that if anything was going to go wrong, it wasn't likely to happen in the first 5 years. Coming up on 2 years in and it's been running like clockwork.
 
What's the life expectancy of a furnace? I don't know what's involved in furnace maintenance, but we've never done any. The second oldest house we owned was 22 years when we sold it and the furnace never gave us a problem. We're coming up to 28 years on the furnace in our current house and wondering if it's a good time to look into a new one taking advantage of the SaveOnEnergy program.
 
If your other leads don’t pan out , I used Appleby Systems , they sit on the Burl/Oakville border . My high efficiency ( that’s about all they do now) was six k installed , was five hundred extra because they had to upgrade the exhaust tube to this years code . Very professional and neat , but six k installed.


Sent from my iPhone using GTAMotorcycle.com
 
raginduck said:
FYI.. just incase you haven't seen it.

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The trick with that is finding an HVAC contractor that hasn't added 7500 to their heat pump pricing which more than uses up the 5K of government money. You don't "invest" 15K in a heat pump. You paid 15K for a heat pump worth close to 5K. There are three parts different between a heat pump and A/C. Tbh, we should just ban A/C's entirely and sell heat pumps for 6K.

EDIT:
A particularly egregious example here. 25K for heat pump, water heater and smart thermostat. Promised a 7K rebate and 0% financing over 20 years. Took the money and ran. Company is closed. Now loans are 15% and bill is close to 40K. For equipment that should be <<$10K installed.

www.cp24.com

Ontario homeowners left with expensive contracts after company appears to go out of business

Several homeowners in Ontario signed contracts with Provincial Smart Home Services promising rebates for their energy efficient upgrades, but now won’t receive them as the company appears to have gone out of business.
www.cp24.com www.cp24.com
 
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GreyGhost said:
A particularly egregious example here. 25K for heat pump, water heater and smart thermostat. Promised a 7K rebate and 0% financing over 20 years. Took the money and ran. Company is closed. Now loans are 15% and bill is close to 40K. For equipment that should be <<$10K installed.

www.cp24.com

Ontario homeowners left with expensive contracts after company appears to go out of business

Several homeowners in Ontario signed contracts with Provincial Smart Home Services promising rebates for their energy efficient upgrades, but now won’t receive them as the company appears to have gone out of business.
www.cp24.com www.cp24.com
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Something doesn't add up. First of all, the rebate is a government rebate and shouldn't matter who the installer is or if they went out of business. They just need to apply for it directly instead of relying on the installer to do it on their behalf. Second, if they have a financing contract stating 0%, then they should get the same rate from whoever's taken over the contract. If the financing company doesn't need to honor the contract, then neither should the homeowner.
 
Relax said:
Something doesn't add up. First of all, the rebate is a government rebate and shouldn't matter who the installer is or if they went out of business. They just need to apply for it directly instead of relying on the installer to do it on their behalf. Second, if they have a financing contract stating 0%, then they should get the same rate from whoever's taken over the contract. If the financing company doesn't need to honor the contract, then neither should the homeowner.
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Suspect the installer wasn't on the up and up from the very beginning, perhaps installing equipment that wasn't eligible for the rebate, or filing for the rebate and taking the money themselves instead of passing it onto the customer. As for the financing rate, they can say whatever they want, but if they planned a rug pull it's entirely possible it never *was* actually 0% and they just outright lied.

Either way I'm sure there will be lawyers involved soon.
 
PrivatePilot said:
Suspect the installer wasn't on the up and up from the very beginning, perhaps installing equipment that wasn't eligible for the rebate, or filing for the rebate and taking the money themselves instead of passing it onto the customer. As for the financing rate, they can say whatever they want, but if they planned a rug pull it's entirely possible it never *was* actually 0% and they just outright lied.

Either way I'm sure there will be lawyers involved soon.
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Does the government actually send rebates to the installer when they file on their behalf? Is this how the EV rebates work as well?
 
Relax said:
Does the government actually send rebates to the installer when they file on their behalf? Is this how the EV rebates work as well?
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Our experience with the EV rebate in Ontario (when that was a thing) was that some dealers would take it off the purchase price and then direct the rebate to the dealer as opposed to the customer. Others relied on the customer to file and collect it themselves.

Not sure how the current rebate situation works, if it can be handled by either party, installer or consumer.
 
@mimico_polak for the win!

He referred me a nice Polish guy named Greg. Called him last night after being ****** around by Enercare for 3 days. (That story later).

Greg came today at noon, changed the furnace and was gone by 4.

Saved enough to buy a KTM over Enercare quotes.
 
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crankcall said:
If your other leads don’t pan out , I used Appleby Systems , they sit on the Burl/Oakville border . My high efficiency ( that’s about all they do now) was six k installed , was five hundred extra because they had to upgrade the exhaust tube to this years code . Very professional and neat , but six k installed.


Sent from my iPhone using GTAMotorcycle.com
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Greg’s price was awesome.

80k btu, 2 stage, 97% efficiency . He also replaced 40’ of black ABS exhaust to bring things up to current code.
 
PrivatePilot said:
Suspect the installer wasn't on the up and up from the very beginning, perhaps installing equipment that wasn't eligible for the rebate, or filing for the rebate and taking the money themselves instead of passing it onto the customer. As for the financing rate, they can say whatever they want, but if they planned a rug pull it's entirely possible it never *was* actually 0% and they just outright lied.

Either way I'm sure there will be lawyers involved soon.
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It would be interesting to see one of the contracts. I suspect the contracts are long and buried in there are clauses that allow all sorts of treachery to happen (rebate signed over to installer, can sell loans, rate not guaranteed, etc.).
 
mimico_polak said:
I’ll send you a PM for my guy when I put the kids down. Great guy. Regardless of being a Polak 😂😂😂
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Sounds like @Mad Mike is a happy customer. Can you please send me his contact as well? I Assume that as an HVAC guy, he's gas certified or whatever - do you know if he can inspect or attache the gas line to a water heater if I install it and plumb the water?
 
Relax said:
Sounds like @Mad Mike is a happy customer. Can you please send me his contact as well? I Assume that as an HVAC guy, he's gas certified or whatever - do you know if he can inspect or attache the gas line to a water heater if I install it and plumb the water?
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No clue. But I’ll send you the info to contact him and he’ll let you know.
 
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