There was a slight breakdown in communication with my A/C replacement quote. For whatever reason, the office thought I had already been given the quote, but the person giving the quote didn’t write anything down. I explained that I was told they would call me because I had questions about available rebates from my local electric company. So whatever, we’re talking now.
I was so nervous about what the quote was going to be, I was hardly listening for anything else. The quote is… are you ready… the technician wrote down a quote of… this is for a 3 ton system… it’s a 16 seer unit… (I can’t afford that!) this unit has a 10 year warranty… and the cost is… including installation… $3,975.
Exhale. So, it’s not a celebration-grade quote, but it is well within budget. So now, I get to tweak the parameters to see where I can go with this. The first thing I asked about was this electric company rebate. The rebate is not available for electric heat systems, which this is. It’s only for heat pumps. So what would that run me? Something like $4,300, and the rebate would be $300. The only problem is, I would have to have additional wiring done, which is an unknown and would certainly add to the cost. The last time I did wiring, for the pool, it was over $1,000. And who knows what that would do to the install timeline. So, we’re going to stay where we are.
Next, let’s address the SEER rating. I have read that the higher seer units jump up in cost rapidly. So, how much can I save by dropping efficiency? Well, there’s a 14 seer option and that’s about $3,200. There’s no 15 seer option. I think the quote was spot on the first time. Now I need to make a 50% deposit and I’m on the schedule.
Yeah, about that schedule. This is the middle of June in Florida. It sure would have been convenient for my AC unit to die in the winter time, but it’s gonna do what it’s gonna do. And what it did was coordinate with all its brethren and join in a mass suicide. So, my appointment is tentatively scheduled for two weeks out. Maybe there will be a cancellation or maybe another job will get wrapped up early and I can get promoted, but I’m probably going to be getting used to 80 degrees in the house.
And you know what? When it’s 93 degrees outside, 80 feels pretty damn good. I can’t really say I’m hurting too badly. I can sleep at night with the ceiling fan and a sheet. I can jump in the pool to cool off, now that I have a fully-restored and fully-maintained pool. If I really got desperate, I could make one of those Styrofoam cooler AC units with a desktop fan and some ice.
Now that I go back and look at my service call invoice from last Thursday, yeah, the cost of the new AC unit is on there. I guess I didn’t need to sweat it. But, I don’t remember being told that was the estimated cost. And it lacked the detail of the quote that I got today, so it all worked out as it should.