Some Like It Warm
January 10th, 2010 by ComputerBob
This is yet another one of my many do-it-yourself adventures, like last month’s Some Like It Hot and Working Hard To Make It Soft, as well as My $135 Gamble last Christmas.
A few nights ago, I went into the garage to do some laundry. After a few minutes, I heard a loud buzzing noise that sounded like a hornets’ nest in the garage’s attic. I slowly walked around our parked cars, trying to figure out exactly where the sound was coming from.
But as I approached it, it suddenly stopped.
I waited several minutes, but if there were hornets, they stayed silent.
Over the next few hours, I snuck back into the garage several times, trying to trace the source of the terrifying sound. Sometimes I heard it; other times I didn’t.
I could even hear it when I walked around outside the garage.
Two mornings ago, the intermittent buzz was still there, but it wasn’t as loud, and it sounded like one big fly, instead of a whole bunch of hornets.
I figured that the cold weather had probably put the unwelcome insects to sleep.
So I very, very carefully pulled both of our cars out of the garage, got my 6-foot step ladder, and climbed up to open one of the garage’s three access hatches and take a peek.
The buzzing got much louder when I opened the west hatch, but I could tell that it was coming from the other side of our heat pump’s blower assembly.
So I carefully closed that hatch, moved my ladder, and opened the east hatch.
As soon as I stuck my head up in the ceiling, I could tell that I was really, really close to the buzzing sound.
But there were no insects.
The sound was coming from our heat pump’s blower assembly itself. In fact, it seemed to be coming from one exact spot on the side of the assembly.
I reached up and touched the spot.
The buzzing immediately stopped.
It was a loose piece of that shiny, foil duct tape that professional HVAC people use to seal cracks.
Two years ago, the last HVAC repair person had broken the seal on the blower assembly’s main cover, so that he could look inside and inspect everything.
When he was finished, he had neglected to re-seal that cover.
The duct tape had been buzzing because air was blowing out between the right side of the main cover and the main body of the blower assembly, causing it to vibrate like the reed on a woodwind instrument.
And the whole blower assembly — a large metal box — had amplified the sound like the hollow body of an acoustic guitar.
A little more inspection revealed that the blower assembly’s main cover not only wasn’t sealed anywhere around its perimeter — it wasn’t even completely closed. I pushed its upper-left corner nearly 3/4 of an inch before it finally seated against the main blower assembly.
Then I used regular duct tape to completely seal all around the cover’s 36-inch-long top and bottom edges and 30-inch left and right edges.
Now when I turn on the heat in our house, a lot more air blows out of all of our vents.
Air that is significantly warmer than it used to be.
I think we’re probably going to save a lot of money on our future heating and air conditioning costs, now that we’re no longer blowing part of them into our garage’s attic.
Thanks to the piece of duct tape that buzzed its tiny little heart out to get my attention and force me to take a look at our heat pump’s unsealed main blower assembly.
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