Is there any owner maintenance on a Teledyne Series One pool heater that would cause the home warranty not to do a repair because of lack of owner maintenance?

Answer 1

Talk to a lawyer or the state department of business regulation that is in charge of construction. Send a certified letter to the contractor and CC the State, demanding that the problem be solved immediately. Most of the more slippery contractors will just try to put off expensive repairs until after the warranty period has expired.

Put your demands in writing and have them become a matter of record, that way the crooked contractor can't claim that he didn't know about the problem until after the warranty expired.

From my experience, there is no warranty on any product if there is neglect, misuse, etc and that would include improper chemical balance -- If your heater failed due to "lack of homeowner (or a service company) maintenance" I do believe you have no case. There has to be an electrical or mechanical part failure or the like. Example: You claim that your filter is broken and will not filter the water in some way. Upon having a service tech inspect the filter after dismantling it and determines that the filter has never been cleaned or even back washed then that claim is going to be denied. This is not a manufacturer's product defect. The defect lies within the owner of the product thru neglect. And on top of it you will be charged at full local service rates for that inspection. You can however, request a second opinion on your heater service call and they most likely will send out another service tech to check out the heater. Just a simple visual and or a mechanical or electrical check of the heater can often times determine neglect. Modifications to the heater that are not mandated by code or the manufacturer are obvious also.

Lack of home owner maintenance would include improper chemical balance such as low pH -- 7.0 or lower or total alkalinity readings -- below 80 ppm improper pool maintenance. Just one or two days of very low acid levels could cause the heater to fail in some way. On the opposite end of the chemical scale, pH readings of 8.0 will cause the heat exchanger to be blocked totally with scale causing the heater exchanger to fail. The latter has sometimes caused the heater to fail while firing and has been known to burn up the heater and the home .

So, it is not always the contractor or the builder who is At Fault, though, there are many unscrupulous contractors in all fields.

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Read your insurance policy. Was it covered?

You can have a team of lawyers . Your insurance WILL NOT cover homeowner or service company neglect. Read the heater warranty. B T W - tht goes for any piece of equipment covered under mfg's warr or a separate homeowners warr. It states more than once that the warranty will be voided if it is determined to be lack of maintenance or neglect. Simple as that. The factory will send a tech to inspect the heater - he or she can determine how a piece of equipment has been treated even if they have to dismantle the entire heater. Just not gonna happen. It could be as simple as improper water chemistry or maintenance.