Midland Heating & Air Conditioning
About us
Midland Heating and Air Conditioning has been servicing your area since 1950. Since our inception we have been installing heating and cooling systems in new and existing homes and small commercial buildings in Minneapolis, St Paul and surrounding communities. Our philosophy is to meet or exceed our customer’s expectations. We offer the best service at reasonable prices. Mention you found us on Angies List for $100 discount on furnace or air conditioning equipment installed!. Additional emails - [email protected], [email protected].
Business highlights
Services we offer
Installation and repair of furnace, air conditioner, boiler, duct work, filters & uv lights., heating, humidifier, radiant
Amenities
Emergency Services
Yes
Free Estimates
Yes
Accepted Payment Methods
- CreditCard
| Number of Stars | Image of Distribution | Number of Ratings |
|---|---|---|
| 62% | ||
| 12% | ||
| 5% | ||
| 12% | ||
| 10% |
The issue here is twofold---- first and foremost, a mistake like this could have had dire consequences if it hadn't been caught by the gas company. Of course, no one is perfect, and my clients and I understand that. However, the cost of a new boiler (including required asbestos abatement) is approximately $9200, the cost of which should have been addressed by the sellers of the home prior to my clients' purchase. We relied on Midland's expertise during the certification process, and there error is costing my clients almost $10,000.
"The issue here is Centerpoints position on these very old boilers. The boiler is operating at safe Carbon Monoxide levels. When Centerpoint came to the house for another problem the first time (which was after the homeowner mover in) they never did the CO test like the homeowner implies,they only saw the broken gasket and red tagged(deimed in their opinion unsafe to operation, but offered no solutions). This is a minor repair and if my tech would have seen the gasket during his certification he would of pointed out the need to repair. The owner did request Centerpoint come out after my visit to the home to do the CO test and they confirmed our readings, acceptable levels of CO to operate boiler, but refused to remove red tag because of gasket issue, which they do not offer to repair. We have made 2 offers to this customer - repair gasket at no cost which will allow the red tag problem to be resolved or at the homeowners request, given them a proposal to replace the boiler. We are being blamed for a problem we did not create! The boiler is old, and during the purchase transaction the buyers were not comfortable with the age of the boiler, the parties involve came to the cheap solution to have the boiler certified which does not change the age of the boiler. Yes these old boiler are expensive to replace so we do get caught in the middle sometime. Centerpoint red tagged the boiler, we have offered fair solutions to solve the problem. We pride ourselves in our reputation and will work with any of our customers to resolve issues in a fair manor. If the homeowner would like to contact us directly we will be happy to consult with them, our offer to replace the boiler is at pricing far less than the 13% discount as they state in this complaint. We wish they would stop going to all the area web sites and making twisted turth claims and deal with us directly if they want to fix the boiler they have or replace a very old boiler"
There were multiple missteps by Midland that could not be addressed by simply adding a larger boiler. I have spoken with Unico Systems technical support, and we (Unico and myself) have concluded Midland Heating & Air Conditioning failed to perform because of the following reasons:
1. Midland did not design a heating system. The result? A woefully undersized heating system, poorly balanced, that failed to meet the heating needs for each room. The most critical part of the process is the upfront design, which is very specific to ones house.
Unico technical bulletins talk about this at great length. For example, "Quite often in multiple story homes and buildings it is difficult to design a system that will evenly heat and cool each floor. It is normal that the upper floors require less heat in the Winter but proportionally more cooling in the Summer."
2. Midland did not perform a heat loss calculation for this install. After three months of living in a cold house and trying to get them to figure out why the system didn't work, I eventually educated myself enough to prod them to produce a heat loss calculation. I was told their software was expired and they'd have to renew it. They sent me a heat loss calculation that failed to include the number and size of the windows, the sizes of the rooms, the square footage of the house, the insulation values of the attic and walls, etc. In other words, they'd never performed a heat loss calculation. I made revisions to the heat loss form and sent it back. This was well into Winter and we actually had to stay in a hotel one weekend the house was so cold. My wife was pregnant and home all day in a cold house with our 3 year old and 1 year old.
3. Midland did not follow the manufactures specifications for installing the appropriate number of outlets for each room. Unico has an installer document titled, Bulletin 40-10 Quik-Sizer. This technical bulletin is used to guide installers during the design phase. For example, the document provides guidance for putting in the required number of outlets based on room size, ceiling height, windows, etc. The bigger the room, the more outlets it needs. We have large downstairs rooms 16 x 16 ft and one room 16 x 32 ft, with 10 ft ceilings. Midland only put two outlets in each room, regardless of room size. The technical bulletin recommends 4 outlets and 6 outlets respectively. Midland only put two outlets in each room, without regard to the size of the room.
4. Midland installed undersized equipment. The boiler was undersized, the Unico heating module was undersized. The Unico heating module, as installed, was only able to produce 60,000 to 70,000 btu's, which was not nearly enough to heat our house. Not only was the equipment too small, they did not even maximize the capacity of what they installed. Why? See #5 and #6.
5. Midland installed 3/4 inch Pex from the boiler to the heating module hotwater coil. 3/4 inch pex will only permit 4.6 gallons of water per minute to move through the hot water coil. What that means is, the small pipe diameter restricts the flow of water, and therefore restricts the amount of heat the air handler can produce. It's right in the technical bulletins (Bulletin 20-20.4 heating module technical specifications) and confirmed by Unico technical support.
6. Midland only installed 27 outlets. None of the downstairs rooms had enough outlets to meet the heating needs. (Bulletin 20-20.4 heating module technical specifications)
7. Midland did not realize they had installed the Unico control board with a jumper set to low instead of high. This restricted the air speed of the air handler. So we spent the first part of Winter with the system running at half it's capacity. Unico technical support walked them through the control board.
8. Midland set the water supply temperature at the boiler so high, the air handler blower motor was overheating. The system would turn on, run for 5 minutes, and shut down. According to Unico technical support, if the boiler water temperature is set too high, it could damage the air handler blower, so the system has a self-protection mechanism and shuts down. The system equipment was actually overheating and shutting down.
9. Midland did not install the boiler circulator on the supply side of the boiler. This is industry best practice. they left the circulator on the return side. See Dan Holohan's (hydronics expert) book Pumping Away.
10. Midland used the wrong Pex material to supply the Unico hot water coil. As a result, the pipes are constantly making noise and as they expand and contract - the pipes are actually rubbing against the wood framing of the house. This can be avoided by using a different Pex material that has an aluminum layer, and it's what should have been used.
11. Midland did not follow the installation documentation for wiring the boiler to the Unico control board. I went through the wiring with Unico technical support, and their exact words were, "I don't know what the heck they (Midland) did. You need to provide us with pictures and document your install so we can help you sort this out."
In addition, Midland installed a non-programmable thermostat, yet they invoiced us for a programmable thermostat.
We eventually had Midland put in a larger boiler - not to fix the installation; the installation was not fixable. The larger boiler was to ensure we had enough capacity for when we spent thousands more dollars adding radiators to the house to supplement the Unico heating system.
"When we took this job and did a heat lose calculation we assumed the homeowner was going to insulate his walls during the remodel, he told us after we installed system that he did not plan to put any insulation in the walls (they have zero), the city of Mpls did not require it either to complete building permit. After redoing the heat lose calculation based on this important information we installed a new larger boiler, the only cost to homeowner was the difference in boiler product cost, we did not charge him any for labor"
"THIS PROJECT WENT ON FOR OVER A YEAR, I HAD MY MONEY INVESTED IN EQUIPMENT AND LABOR FOR ALL THIS TIME. THE HOMEOWNER DID NOT SEEM TO BE IN ANY HURRY AS THE HOUSE IS STILL A LONG WAY FROM FINISHED, YET HE IS COMPLAINING ABOUT US KEEPING A SCHEDULE?"
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