Meritage Homes built out house just over a year ago, and after about 4 months we noticed a sour smell beginning to come through the air conditioning vents when the air would kick on. It is the same smell that you notice in car air conditioners when they are not draining properly, and you get that foul smell when you first turn it on. Imagine that smell in your whole house, all the time. They had their subcontracted firm, Sierra Air, come out multiple times, each time claiming "not to smell anything" and each time finding an installation problem that they would "fix" to correct the problem. Each time it was another story, from vents being "installed wrong" to parts that were "installed backwards" nothing ever stopped the smell. They cleaned the ducts, they recharged the system, checked the freon lines, you name it. We kept telling them that there was an obvious drainage problem... Because not only was the smell of stagnent water really obvious, but also that very little water ever came out of the drain on the side of the house, no matter how much the units ran. Meritage's customer service person, a nice guy named Moe, kept telling them that everyone else's house he was at would have big puddles of drainage water, all at the same times we had none at all!
The hot season ended with Moe telling us to call them if the smell came back next year, and they would take care of it. The next year came, the smell got worse, and we called them to find out that Moe had been transferred. This year again they "could not smell it" and had the Sierra Air tech come out to check it "as a courtesy." They aslo had a "mold tester" come out and conveniently find nothing. They sent the tech up into the attic to check it all out and "correct the drainage lines" that I had photographed to show them the sloppy installation. He opened up the unit and "found nothing" and we noticed that they never wrote down anything that they did on their report sheets. We noticed there were some undocumented changes to the pvc drain lines, and also noticed that the drainage puddles outside were now huge, and it was obviously draining a lot of water. The smell went away.
They told us that there was nothing more they could do, and from that point we would need to sue them if we wanted to address this issue any more. We thought they had finally fixed the problem, and we hoped it would not come up again. About 4 days later, the drainage stopped completely, to the point of there not being even a single drop of drainage water coming out of the units. The smell came back twice as bad as before, and now is so bad that it makes you feel very sick when the air comes on. It literally smells like old mopwater every time the air kicks on. It looks like we are on our own, and will either have to sue them and try to prove our case (which will be tough because they had their "expert" not find anything) or replace the units ourselves.
We do not have a lot of choices in the matter, especially since there have been so many other problems with the house that it has gotten to the point of not being able to take off work anymore to let the workers in to fix things. They even asked to "keep a set of keys" to the house so we wouldn't have to be there when they came in. After they "accidentally lost the keys down a port-a potty" (which later was admitted to be a lie... The guy actually forgot the keys on his tray at McDonald's) we just wanted a break from the horrible customer service. We decided to just tell the stories on a website we have started called where you can read our horror stories and also submit your own for everyone to read. Maybe they will have to do better if everyone realizes how bad their customer service is. BTW the house cost over 400 thousand dollars... You would think you get a little bit better for a price like that!
Ray
Las Vegas, Nevada
U.S.A.
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