One of the many deficiencies of the geothermal heating/cooling system that Achieve Renewable Energy LLC installed in our home was the humidifier they installed. And I came to find that other geothermal system customers also experienced problems with the humidifiers that Achieve Renewable Energy installed in their homes.
The humidifiers failed to adequately humidify our homes’ air
When Achieve Renewable Energy LLC replaced our home’s prior oil-fueled hot water baseboard heating system with a geothermal system, I chose to have them install a humidifier on the system to keep our home’s air comfortable and healthy in the colder months. But a few months after they installed the system and humidifier, I reported to Lawrence “Larry” Lessard that the air in our home was uncomfortably dry and my skin and sinuses were dry. Instead of addressing the humidifier or system they installed, he blamed the low humidity on what he claimed was our drafty house.
Even the geothermal system’s online customer interface showed that the system was failing to humidify the air adequately. The below screenshot shows that I had the air’s humidity level set at 50% but the system was only sustaining a mere 35% humidity.
Another customer who had a geothermal system installed with a humidifier by Achieve Renewable Energy LLC around that same time shared his experience with me. He said that the system did not humidify his home adequately, resulting in a dry throat for him. He resorted to hanging damp laundry over some vents to humidify the home’s air while drying his laundry.
In another customer’s testimony under oath in his deposition, the customer said that the humidifier Achieve Renewable Energy LLC installed did not work:
The humidifier they installed spilled water into and contaminated our home’s ducting
Eventually I noticed a musty smell coming from our ducting. I traced it to the humidifier that Achieve Renewable Energy LLC installed, which had spilled water into the ducting. And that appeared to have resulted in the growth of fungi or other microbes in the ducting, as shown in the below photographs. Cleaning up that mess and treating the microbial growth cleared up the musty smell.
Other tradespeople, including heating/cooling system installers and a home inspector, explained to me that such rotating disc-type humidifiers were not suitable for geothermal systems and were prone to causing such microbial contamination.
Replacing the rotating-disc humidifier with a steam-injection humidifier solved both problems
At the recommendation of another geothermal system installer, I had Achieve Renewable Energy LLC’s rotating disc-type humidifier replaced with a steam injection-type humidifier. Specifically, I had the AprilAire 800 humidifier installed. Since we had it installed a few years ago, it has performed well. We’ve had no further contamination problems and it has kept our home’s air humidity right at the healthful, comfortable level I set in the geothermal system. That seems to me to pretty clearly refute Achieve Renewable Energy LLC’s assertion that it was our house’s fault that their humidifier was failing to humidify our home’s air adequately.