Heat Pumps and Electric Heating - screwed in SC (Its a long post but good entertainment)

This is going to be long, fair warning.

In 10/2005, I bought a 1900 sq ft cape with a 2.5 ton goodman split system, heat pump. System passed inspection for purchase and I had an AHS warranty, so...May, 2006 Turn on AC, and it wont cool, constant hot and no air flow. AHS afilliated repair service comes out, diagnos' as a bad compressor, AHS replaces compressor at my cost $300, theirs $2200, parts and labor. Still living in an 80deg house. Had repair company out five more times and nothing is working right. I called AHS and said send someone who knows what they're doing, they send a different guy, He NO's what he's doing, says my air handler is shot, blower is sitting in water due to drain being installed wrong, and here's an $1800 estimate. He leaves and within the hour AHS calls leaving a nasty message stating that repair will not be covered due to faulty installation(even though I didn't install) and that system would not be covered until repaired to the second guys diagnosis, with 5 months left on a contract I didn't pay for, I told them to piss off. I didn't have $1800, and felt that their first techs screwed up more than they fixed. In July I went away and let my system set and drain, Didn't even run the fan, when I got home I inspected the drain and repaired it to function correctly, and showed a friend who is a maintenance man at an apartment complex what was going on, Fan worked well, coils just sweat alot. He has his boss come over and check freon, 7lbs low, top offf, same thing. Long story short after rewiring the fan to high speed and running it with side panel off and getting tons of air through the vents, my friend goes right to the back side of the coil which visibly appeared to have never had its sealing broken, and pulled off two inches of crud. Wow we had ac! Ran constantly though but kept the house cool, then winter came... no heat, just ac. Another associate of mine,(not the smart friend) puts in a Tstat(wrong one) reconnects the heat strips that the first techs dis-con'd, and I have electric heat, no heat pump, and no control over the unit except for throwing the breaker to turn it off/on. then on the coldest night of the year heat wont run off the breaker. Call another guy, tell him I know I need a new system what can I do to get it to last until spring when my smart friend will be around again, and can help me install a new sysytem, he charges me $70- to tell me I need a new system and he cant even tell me whats wrong until i replace t-stat with correct type, Heatpump w/aux. Now I am convinced there isn't an honest HVAC guy in the area, so I start researching, I don't know much about hvac but, I am an Injection Molding process engineer with a lot of experience with electric controls on machinery, I found my heat sequencer broken, so I rplaced it, the BTDR, run capacitor, and heat strips. I bought a Rite temp model 8010 t-stat, states it is for heat pumps with electric heat. Find idiot who installed t-stat pulled codes off wires. Research again, hook up my red--rh, orange--o, yellow--y, jumped to white as per schematic supplied with the t-stat, and white--w2, It ran and t-stat controlled the fan but still no heat pump, so despite the desperate urging of my wife I research more and thinking maybe the problem was in the wiring to t-stat all this time, and crossed my thinking at 1am and put blue to b, and brown to rc( thinking I was going common to common) and it doesn't work any more, meter and me go under the house and now getting 230v on one side of transformer and nothing on the other side. So i put in a new transformer today and had 24 volts ac on the low voltage, but still no function, when i checked the voltage at the thermostat got nothing, tried jumping green, and red to run fan( saw that here) and it wouldn't run. I have no 24 volt at the defrost board before installing new trans in the air handler, but that shouldn't stop the heat strips and fan should it? Is my t-stat toasted from the mis wire the other night? Please help me not become the hvac vigilante( my wifes statement after I turned the air blue over getting charged double at the local johnstone store for electrical parts because I am not lic'd) I just want to get this thing though the next two months. Thanks in advance, and hope you had a good laugh at my misery cuz thats what my co-workers do when I go into this hvac rant.

Boy --- Thats a long tail for sure. Where to start is need 24V power
Research again, hook up my red--rh, orange--o, yellow--y, jumped to white as per schematic supplied with the t-stat, and white--w2, It ran and t-stat controlled the fan but still no heat pump,
There are so many tstat out to day its hard to say for sure.
R is power one leg of the 24V to the tstat lots of tstat have a R or a Rh and RC if so you need a jumper from RH to RC G is fan and Y is compressor. So R to Y should run the compressor for heat pump . R to Y to O should give you cool. You need a jumper from Y to W , W2 should give you electric heat.
So start at the transformer Id say You need 24V for things to work;)

Well you were off to a prettu good start but the Blue wire probably did it. I think you were OK up to the Blue and Brown. It is possible that the thermostat is fried too. If you do not have a fuse anywhere (which seems obvious as you smoked the xfmr) you should do some checking with a jumper. Take all wires off of the thermostat and see if you have 24 vac from Red wire to Blue. If not, go to air handler and check wiring again. You may have smoked second xfmr if wiring was not disconnected from wrong way before turning on the power. The 24 volts to the defrost board comes from the indoor unit too so now it seems like your 24 volts is not available. I think you are just about to where you can have heat again but need to follow good troubleshooting technique to get there without more smoke.

Next time you bring your friends around, offer to pay them and possibly their heart will be in it. I know how many friends I have when their stuff is broken but never get Christmas cards from them when all is well. Not that they aren't your friends but they probably try to have a life too. I'm working on one but not there yet.

Ken

thanks for the replies I am about to go under the house again with my meter, before I head to lowes, or HD for a t-stat. My friends who helped me , one is a very knowledgable jack of all trades having worked in construction and home repair since he was young, unfortunately he is in jail until april. The other turned out not to be a friend at all as I found when he robbed my house while I was in New England one weekend and my family went to church. So the buddy in jail his heart is in it, the thief... well he'll get his some day. Anyway, I have been shopping for a new system, I am leaning towards a 3.5 ton 13 seer goodman package heat pump with elec back-up. I want the pkg so any service can be done with out crawling through the underside of the house, and as it comes pre-filled all I would have to do is install wiring and replace air handler with ducting, correct? Then the local crooks would only need to come reclaim my old refrigerant, and can't rip me off. Is there any advantage to a split system vs a pkg unit? from what I can see the prices and efficiency ratings are similar. Sure would like to not have to test my pipe sweating skills(not good). Thanks to all who have taken the time to read all this, and to those who replied. Its good to vent

I have heat!!! Heat pump is still not working but aux and fan are. T-stat is controlling also, now I just have to troubleshoot the heatpump.