My wife and I had owned our house for about five years when she decided we needed to schedule an appointment to have our heat pump professionally serviced.
At the time, the system was working just fine.
I made sure to keep up with cleaning the air filter every four to six weeks. Every year, I took the unit apart and carefully cleaned the interior components. Since moving in, we’d never had a single complaint or problem with the heat pump. My wife read an article that warned about the dangers of poor indoor air quality. She became convinced that the heat pump was spreading all kinds of harmful bacteria, spores and toxins throughout the house. She blamed every sneeze, cough and sleepless night on the heat pump. I finally told her to go ahead and hire a licensed contractor to service the heat pump. I figured the process would be a waste of money but harmless. The technician showed up several hours late for the appointment and then spent about fifteen minutes working on our heat pump. After he left, the heat pump ran for half an hour and then quit. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get it running again. My wife called the HVAC contractor back and complained. They claimed they weren’t responsible. We ended up hiring a different contractor to check out the heat pump, and he told us we needed to buy a whole new system. Having our older heat pump professionally maintained cost us thousands of dollars. We now have a new system that I am very meticulously maintaining on my own.