Last week, on a typically warm day here in Merida, Mexico, I was working in my home office with the air conditioning all of a sudden stopped working. At first, I thought perhaps it was a breaker that went out, but upon further investigation, I discovered that all but one of my AC units stopped working. To understand the problem, I need to back up a little bit and explain how air conditioning works here in Mexico.
In Mexico, it is not common to have a central air conditioning system. Instead, for the homes with air conditioning, you typically would have a unit in every room called a mini-split. It is not uncommon for a home to only have fans in each room and air conditioning in the bedrooms using a mini-split.
Now when we rented our long-term home, it did not come with air conditioners or appliances. Therefore, it was up to me to figure out how many units we needed, which brand was the best, and how to install them. Initially, I opted to have air conditioning units installed in the bedrooms that we occupied, the family room, and the kitchen. When the installers came, they installed a new breaker box for the four units in a central location.
I later had a new unit installed last week, within 24 hours of purchasing the unit, by one of the tried and proven MexPert providers on the MexitList. I purchased the unit at Liverpool, sent him a text on the day of purchase, and he came out and installed the unit the next day. This was my 3rd time using his services, and each time he showed up on time and did excellent work. On this particular day, when my four air conditioning units suddenly stopped working, the only unit that kept going was the one that the MexPert had installed days earlier.
The four units that stopped working turned out to have a problem with the breaker panel. I reached out to the original installer, but he couldn't come out until later in the week. When I reached out to the MexPert, he made an appointment for that evening.
When the MexPert arrived, he checked the main breaker box and the sub breaker box with the four units. The issue was found to be a burnt-out wire on the sub breaker caused by the excessive load of too many units being on all at once. All four of the units were running at the time of the issue. When I saw the burnt wire, I cringed a bit because it was literally sitting in the breaker box with electrical tape wrapped around it in a very poorly protected splice. This would NEVER have passed code in the states and was clearly a janky job did by the original installers just to get finished with the project. Luckily the houses here are made of concrete, so not much to set on fire, but this definitely could have been a bigger issue if in a wooden framed house in the United States of America. Needless to say, the MexPert quickly diagnosed the issue and fixed the problem. After fixing the principle issue, he proceeded to test the system with all air conditioning units turned on at the same time. After additional inspection, he discovered a second splice in the main breaker box where a breaker should have been. He quickly rerouted the splice to a new breaker and permanently fixed all my issues.
Now the good part, I did a poll on my Facebook page about this last week. I asked the question, "How much do you think it cost me for same-day electrician services to fix not one but two breaker boxes and restore my air conditioning?" I got responses from $100 dollars USD to $700 dollars USD. The answer is $16.00 dollars USD. Not only did the MexPert provide outstanding services, but he did so at an extremely low price.
Well, if you want to know the details of this MexPert. Please subscribe to the MexConnect Membership. You get access to all the experts that I have personally vetted and spent money with and others that are not vetted but recommended by colleagues.
Until Next Time,
MexitPlans Monte
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