Leaving customers with inadequate heating

In the course of my lawsuit against Achieve Renewable Energy LLC, I gathered evidence that I was not the only customer whose home was inadequately heated by the geothermal system Achieve Renewable Energy installed. Nor was I the only one they left with such inadequate heating for quite a length of time during winter in Massachusetts. Here is some of that evidence and documentation.

Achieve Renewable Energy LLC replaced our home’s central heating and air conditioning systems with a geothermal system in the month of September. That time of the year, of course, is not particularly cold in Massachusetts. Nonetheless, by early November it was uncomfortably obvious to me that the geothermal system that Achieve Renewable Energy LLC had installed was not adequately heating our home. So I sent the below email message to the director, Lawrence “Larry” Lessard:

Mr. Lessard replied that he “logged in and made some adjustments to the configuration of the zone controller.” And he came by the next week, looked at the duct registers in the floor, and simply had me adjust those. Later that month Achieve Renewable Energy sent a subcontractor to my home to do an “energy audit”—which focused on the house. Neither Achieve Renewable Energy nor that energy auditor examined the geothermal system’s other critical elements like the heat pump they installed or the geothermal wells they dug. Instead, they used the supposedly independent energy auditor Daniel Jarmolowicz to create an energy audit report on my house rather than the geothermal system.

Achieve Renewable Energy LLC installed geothermal systems that did not heat homes adequately, blamed other parts of the homes, and attempted to make more money off the customers by proposing to make alterations to their houses

I later learned that Achieve Renewable Energy used that same tactic with another customer whose system they installed around the same time and who reported to them that the geothermal system was failing to heat their home adequately. I also later learned that Achieve Renewable Energy LLC was at the time participating in a program called Home MVP run by a Massachusetts agency that gave taxpayer funds to participating contractors to make improvements to MA homes’ energy efficiency, like adding insulation. Thus, Achieve Renewable Energy LLC would have been paid extra to make alterations to my home that were not part of the geothermal system installation project I contracted with them for. You can see in the below copy of that agency’s web page at the time what the program was and that Achieve Renewable Energy LLC was a participating contractor.

The other customer that Achieve Renewable Energy LLC did that to around the same time also communicated their concern about the inadequate heating of their home in an email message to Mr. Lessard. For the customer’s privacy I have removed their identifying information in the below copy of their email message that Achieve Renewable Energy authenticated during my lawsuit.

And as you can see in the below copy of a subsequent (also authenticated) email message, Achieve Renewable Energy LLC’s response to that customer was essentially the same as what they did to me:

1. Send subcontractor Daniel Jarmolowicz to do an “energy audit” of their home.
2. Have the energy auditor create a report on the energy audit.
3. Use the report as justification to suggest that the customer allow Achieve Renewable Energy LLC to get paid by the Massachusetts Home MVP program to make alterations to the customer’s home.

But in another case, a different customer in Massachusetts emailed Lawrence “Larry” Lessard about Achieve Renewable Energy LLC leaving much of their home without heat for “almost two years”. In the below authenticated copy of that email message, the customer seems to me to be exasperated with Mr. Lessard and his company, as I often was. I have redacted the customer’s identifying information.

In a familiar theme, Mr. Lessard replied to that customer and blamed the supposed air leakage of the house for the geothermal system’s failure to adequately heat the home. What stood out to me in the below copy of that email exchange is that the air leakage rate Achieve Renewable Energy LLC’s attorney suggested that my house should have just so happened to be the same 2,000 CFM that Mr. Lessard recommended for this other customer’s house in the below email exchange. But Achieve Renewable Energy LLC’s Manual J calculation used a total of 2,917 square feet for the two floors of my house to be heated, whereas Achieve Renewable Energy LLC’s Manual J calculation used a total of 8,269 square feet for the four floors of this other customer’s house to be heated. So apparently according to Achieve Renewable Energy LLC’s logic, the age, design, and size of the house do not matter. Once a customer complains that the geothermal system Achieve Renewable Energy LLC installed is not heating their home adequately, the house must be fixed (not the system), and the house’s air leakage must be reduced to the magic rate of 2,000 CFM.

But there are several problems with Achieve Renewable Energy LLC’s twisted logic:

1. Our home’s prior 29 year-old oil-fueled system heated our home adequately. Thus, it was obviously not the fault of our house that the geothermal system Achieve Renewable Energy LLC installed failed to adequately heat our home.
2. After signing the contract with Achieve Renewable Energy LLC for this project, I actually had an insulation contractor perform air gap sealing throughout our house. A blower door test proved that substantially reduced the air leakage rate of our house. Thus, by the time Achieve Renewable Energy LLC installed the geothermal system, our house was much tighter than when Mr. Lessard examined it to prepare the proposal for the geothermal system installation.
3. Achieve Renewable Energy LLC only used a subcontractor to perform an “energy audit” with a blower door test after installing the geothermal system in our home.
4. I actually performed the insulation and energy efficiency improvements that their “energy audit” suggested and it failed to get the system to adequately heat our home or lower the high heating costs down to where Achieve Renewable Energy LLC said they would be in our contract.

But let’s circle back to my home for a moment. My attorney conducted a deposition of the energy auditor Daniel Jarmolowicz that Achieve Renewable Energy LLC sent into my home after installing the inadequate geothermal system. On pages 59 through 64 of the below transcript of the deposition, you can see that Mr. Jarmolowicz admitted to falsifying information in his energy audit report about my home so that Achieve Renewable Energy LLC could submit it to the Massachusetts Home MVP program. And take a look at pages 78 through 80, where this question and answer are transcribed:

Question: Did you ever represent to Mr. Lessard or Achieve Renewable Energy that completing the tasks suggested in your energy audit report at Mr. Bush’s home would get Mr. Bush’s geothermal heating and cooling system performing as Achieve had initially represented to Mr. Bush that it would do?

Answer: No.

It appears to me that Achieve Renewable Energy LLC botched the design and installation of geothermal systems in my and one or more other customers’ homes so that:

1. they could then blame the houses for the geothermal systems’ performance problems, and
2. try to make additional profit off that customer by getting money from the Massachusetts Home MVP program to make alterations to the customers’ homes.