A lot of damage for very little copper.

One of my customers has a 2nd home in upper Skagit county. This particular home I believe was someday going to be their retirement home. Unfortunately the house is very isolated in a rural area, making it very attractive for thieves and vandals. Sometime during the last few months someone broke in and stole a lot of copper from the house, some of which was the copper lines/coils used in the heat pump system.

Existing coleman heat pump

Above you see the existing Coleman heat pump we installed years ago, what is missing is the refer line set that ran from the heat pump to the indoor coil.

Damaged service valves

As you can see the thieves didn’t exactly use a tubing cutter to remove the copper lines. The service valves where compromised, actually twisted behind the access panel. The damage they caused far out ways the copper they recovered.

Coleman indoor coil

When the thieves tried do remove the indoor coil they realized it was bolted into the unit, so they then destroyed the indoor coil, leaving no room for reconnection.

New Coleman Indoor Coil

As you can see above the difference between the old damaged coil and the new coil being installed.

Tech brazing in the coil

The new coil had to come from the factory so it took a few weeks to get, but it slid right in and my technician brazed it right up. While brazing always run nitrogen through the lines to make a nice clean internal weld. Any internal scaling will cause damage down the road.

Pumping down the unit.

After the lines had been purged and welded we then tested with nitrogen. After we pass a nitrogen pressure test we pump down the lines with a vacuum pump. We use a micron gauge to monitor how well we are pumping the system down.

We really kept our fingers crossed because we did not know the extend of the internal damaged caused to the heat pump. In this cause the unit fired right up and ran like new.

Heating And Cooling Skagit County

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