An unexpected cost to traveling with our Big Paws

[GoldenPyrs]

When we pick up our van from the dealership tomorrow, we'll be at least $700 poorer.  You may remember that I've posted that we live in a very, very cool & cloudy climate (ok, it's downright damp & cold, but did I say that?  ), so our pups can safely travel with us a lot of the time.

Well, we just found a big downside to that habit, besides vacuuming off tons of dog hair off of the seats & carpet.  Seems that when we turn on either heat or a/c, that dog hair gets sucked into our van's HVAC system and has caused a hard packed mass of dog hair to plug up the system.  We took the van into the dealership to get the coolant recharged (for when we do see the sun), we thought!  Nope, much more expensive than that!   

So on Monday when we pick up the van from the dealership, we'll be adding some fancy (ha!) retrofitted thinga-ma-jig that my husband is creating out of a small HVAC filter & probably duct tape (gadzooks) to the spot in the car where it sucks in the air to be heated or cooled.  Hopefully, that will filter out the dog hair before it clogs the system again.  Who knew?     Still, it's all worth it.   

[lookingfornewf]

Ooooo, thanks for the warning. Whenever it's cool enough Clifford goes with me in my truck lots of the time. I never even thought about that. I'll check my intake thingy. Usually it's just a pain to vacuum the seats and there is always a lint roller handy for when I get out.

[GoldenPyrs]

Choke, cough...it was $850 but now the AC is working great.  Good thing too, because we have to travel to a hot climate soon.  Beware everyone, because we had no warning that this was happening.  The intake for our heat/AC system is just above the front passenger's foot area and there wasn't any kind of filter on the system.  It just sucked in all the air (and the hair  ) willy nilly. 

Honestly, we *DO* vacuum our car    it's just that with 300 lbs of fluffy double-coated beasties along for the ride, apparently there was more hair floating through the air than we thought.  Tomorrow, thanks to hubby, our car will be sporting a brand new filter, so we don't have any repeats. 

[DAMAGE]

Ooooh, I share your pain! Just had the same thing happen to us. Our Suburban has separate controls for the air conditioner, front and rear. Apparently dog hair got sucked into and clogged the rear air intake, destroying the compressor. It isn't open like the "front foot" area so when vacuuming back there you don't think to remove the vinyl (grille?) covers and inspect for hairballs. We will now though! The cost of replacing the a/c was horrific! Okay folks, everyone go out now and inspect your vehicle air intakes for hairball clogs, especially if it has quite a few doggy miles on it like ours did!!

[Tspanos]

I have never heard of this before, thank you for the heads up.

[kathryn]

I have never heard of this.  I'm assuming that mine is under the dash since I have a truck.  I very rarely ever vacuum my truck and the dogs are in there a good bit of the time.  Thanks for the heads up.