The Hart Company Plumbing and Heating

In March of 2008 I hired this company to install a new, propane forced air furnace & central air conditioning system in a house on Martha's Vineyard that had never had one. (An oill furnace and radiators had been removed before by another company.) The Hart Co. did not begin installation until 3 weeks after they said they would. A few weeks after that, Jim Hart said it was done and requested payment. He was paid in full. The furnace never worked correctly from the start. The company promised to come to do the repairs, but wouldn't show up. Sometimes, the furnace would shut off before reaching the desired temperature on the thermostat. Other times, even when it wasn't very cold out, the furnace would take 4 hours to reach the desired temperature. In June, 2008 I learned that the AC had never been hooked up at all. After a few requests, Mr. Hart sent Tim McNamara to hook up the AC which had many of the same problems the heating system had. At first, McNamara would come over and try to make adjustments. Later they stopped coming all together. Many times between June of 2008 and June of 2009, they promised to come over and fix the system. Most of the time, they wouldn't come. A few times they would come and look at the system, but do no work. They did observe the problem first hand, but I don't believe they could figure out the problem. After a year and a half of promises and unreturned phone calls, I called in an established heating and cooling company on the Cape to diagnose the problem. The second company said the HVAC system wasn't getting enough air in the system and I needed an additional 4 cold air returns. (Hart had only installed one cold air return for the entire house.) The second company also said another part was missing from the HVAC system all together and that the hot air piping was crimped and improperly installed. The second company estimated the cost to finish the job will be about $6000.