Here's the thing. If I was there I could most likely diagnose your problem in about five minutes but I'm not and honestly, it could be any one of about a dozen things, most of which require that you understand control circuitry and how to use a multimeter properly. I'm nothing special either. Any competent service tech can fix you up in short order but, for your description I suspect that you are less than thrilled to pay someone for their knowledge and skills. The other thing that may come back to bite you on the ass is that your side-job, fly by night installer may have screwed the pooch to the point where it's going to cost you more than you saved to straighten the mess out. AA
I don't know why you think I don't want to pay someone, b/c if you notice I am paying someone to come out tomorrow, so that's not true. However, you are correct that IF I can fix something myself, I will hang onto my hard earned money, which I don't have an endless supply of, and that applies to ANYTHING not just HVAC work. It used to be that most everyone did things that way, they grew their own food, changed their own oil, and well, you get the point. When I got quotes for 12k-13k to install a new system in my tiny little 1000sq ft home, and I could not afford it, and my 3 yr old and 5 yr old freeze at night in the winter and sweat all day in the summer, you're right - I found someone to do it for less - a LOT less. Even if I paid the repair man $6k I'd still break even with that original quote, so I highly doubt I will ever spend more than if I had gone through one of those companies. Regardless of all of that, it should not matter how I had to have my system installed, the point is that I have a repair issue, I went on a repair forum, and asked for help. I didn't realize it was a page where I sign up to have you come over and fix it for me, for money. If you don't like offering advice and help to people, why be on the site, just to give people hell for not calling a repair man every chance they get?
I should add that if I already did pay someone to come over and install a system and I'm having problems with it, why on earth would I immediately want to pay someone else? It seems to me I've had a lot of incompetent help in HVAC and mechanics, and other fields, so it doesn't hurt to use my brain and look into issues on my own, rather than throwing my money blindly at problems, and hoping someone fixes it correctly eventually. I can bet you've paid someone to do something before and had them do it incorrectly and I'll bet the next time you may have looked into the issue before hand and done research to try to protect yourself. I can't tell you how many reviews I've read from people that have "had 4 techs out and no one figured it out until Joe Schmoe came over". Sorry, but I don't have a money tree, and I can't pay ten people to come look at something. I am fairly intelligent though, and willing to put some work in to protect my investment - whether or not you (or I) like the way I had to buy it in the first place.