
Mr. Colin Phillips
Airtech Pty Ltd
971 South Road
Melrose Park SA 5039

22 April 1999

Dear Colin,

I refer to my letter of the 28th January and your reply (unsigned) of the 29th. In my letter, I set you a time limit of the statutory seven days to resolve the following problems:

As the result of a compressor failure, brought on by repeated icing up of the coils, the unit had been unoperative for 25 days.
The existing ductwork is incorrectly laid. The two bedrooms at the extreme bottom left of the current plan are connected by a single relatively long and thin duct, whereas the study is connected by a shorter and wider one. Similar considerations apply for the laundry, which appears to have too short and wide a duct. As a result, the bedrooms are too cold in winter and the laundry is too warm.
The thermostat is not operating correctly. Although it was adjusted last winter, the cut-in and cut-out temperatures appear to have diverged and are now about 3.2° apart.
In addition, when cooling, the unit does not stop cooling when it reaches the target temperature.
The cover of the thermostat does not close.
We still did not have a resolution to the icing problem.

The only thing you demonstrated within the seven days was that, despite your efforts, you were not able to deliver the service you had promised in your quotation, which is thus part of the contract. The compressor was not replaced until 11 February, two weeks or ten working days after my letter. I would consider this unacceptably slow even without the prior history. On this occasion--by chance--your engineer also solved the problem with the cover of the thermostat, hardly the biggest of the remaining problems. Until today, 12 weeks after my letter, you have not shown any intent of addressing the other problems.

Today we have had a recurrence of the icing problem. We are sure, and your engineer Pat agrees, that it was the repeated icing that caused the early failure of the compressor, so we are taking this matter very seriously. I first reported icing on the 8th May 1998, three weeks after installation. In the ensuing time, nearly a year, you have shown no sign that you understand the problem, nor that you can fix it.

In previous letters, I voiced the opinion that the icing was caused by a combination of cool, wet weather and high winds. The incident today shows that this is incorrect: it is a calm, sunny and not particularly cool day (16°), and the relative humidity is 43%.

We have had to do without the air conditioner through most of one of the hottest summers in recent history. We do not intend to do without it throughout what promises to be a correspondingly cold winter. Please suggest a solution to this problem by the end of the month. In view of the fact that you have not been able to determine the cause of the icing in the last twelve months, the only solution I can see is that you replace the unit with a maintainable unit of a different make. In this connection, I should inform you that we are installing three phase power, so it would be possible to install one of your more normal range of air conditioners.

Sincerely,

Greg Lehey