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biondanonima

Major AC leak in the attic after gutter work - help!

We just had our gutters cleaned and some holes in our roof line/attic dormers sealed up (to keep out the damn birds!). The contractor also mentioned that they had to "re-pitch" the gutters, which I assume means setting them at an angle to make sure the water flows to the downspout. Anyway, they finished the work yesterday and all was well until this morning, when my husband (who was fortunately working from home today) called me at work in a panic, saying that the AC evaporator/blower in the attic had leaked all over the floor and drenched the ceiling in the bedroom below.

He turned off the unit and is in the process of cleaning up now. He also called an HVAC guy our realtor recommended, who said that he was 99.99% sure that it was a problem with the drainage to the outside, caused by the gutter work, and to get the gutter guy back to check to save ourselves his service call fee. We called the gutter guy and he immediately denied that his crew could have caused the problem, but he is coming back to check tonight or tomorrow morning.

So, HVAC experts - what are your thoughts? Could the re-pitch of the gutters have caused this, or do you think it more likely that they blocked the drainage pipe entirely? Or could this just be a coincidence? What do we do if he denies responsibility? Unfortunately we don't have a ladder tall enough to reach the gutters ourselves, so no way to check until the gutter guy comes back. Luckily I haven't paid the final payment on the work they did for us, so I do have some leverage, but I'm concerned that the repairs to the bedroom ceiling are going to be expensive to say the least.

In the meantime, we are without AC upstairs, which is pretty painful given that it's almost 90 degrees outside. We have a dual zone system, so I assume it's okay to run the AC downstairs? Thanks in advance for any and all advice you can offer!

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