Hall of shame.

[Icemanjohn]

Here is one more for review. This happened about 20 years ago, when I was doing service and installations.

The owner asked for a cost to install a cold room for apple storage. He wanted glass display doors and racks on the front of the cooler for retail sales.

Did the drawings, layout, and proposal and dropped them off. Several months went by with no notice to start the job. (I had been doing the regular work for many past years for this family).

One day at the facility I asked "what is the status of the apple cooler?" Found out it was being completed by a part-time refrigeration guy. The other part of his time he was a preacher in a church. His cost was much lower, so he got the job.

Can you see were this is going??

The cooler was built with framed up lumber, fiberglass sheets, and styrofoam board (1" thick). No vapor barrier was installed. Interior lights were open incadescent bulbs (not vapor-proof light fixtures). Door lighting was installed with normal fluorescent tubes (no low-temperature ballasts). Door heaters were not wired up (doors frames sweated and were foggy). Air defrost timer was set for 3 hours off (3 times a day). Temperature would not come down (big surprise there).

The owner asked me to fix it. By the time we got done correcting all of the problems, the total cost was almost double my original cost.

Some people will believe cost determines the quality. Others think cheaper is saving money. Both (myself and the preacher) promised the owner that our proposals would do what he required. The finall version worked quite well, but it was a painful project for the owner.

Moral to the story.... It takes money to make a system work properly and it must be installed by qualified people.

I'm sure everyone has seen these systems. piping runs that sag or are crooked, exposed wiring and cables, and any other poor installation practice you can imagine.

In my opinion, the cost is not the primary point to use for judging the installation or who to award the project to. It is the workmanship and knowledge that make the system run trouble-free from the initial start-up.

My ol dad had it sussed when he said "you pay peanuts you get monkeys"
Customers hate being told they've ****ed up but it's nice to gloat, even just a little bit