Shows / The Human Diagnostic
The Human Diagnostic
Looking for honest stories about people, not product reviews? You're in the right place.The Human Diagnostic isn't a how-to HVAC podcast. It's what a 45-year Master Technician notices about people after 90,000 service calls across gas plants, oil rigs, hospital preservation systems, high-rises, feedlots, walk-in freezers, and residential homes all over Central Oklahoma.Hosted by Dave Hartzell, each episode tells a real story from a real service call. Sometimes he's driving to the job and…
Episodes
- The Human Diagnostic
His Birthday Is Why He Finally Called About the Heat Pump
It was 86 degrees in that kitchen, and the sheet of notebook paper stuck to the refrigerator had "AC checkup" written on the very first line. It was the first…
- The Human Diagnostic
Why a Rare Disaster Scared Her More Than the AC Problem She Lived With
She met me at the front door wearing her winter coat, inside her own house, and the first thing she said was, "I shut it off before it could blow up." It was…
- The Human Diagnostic
Ancient Fears in a Modern Home: The Spider That Stopped the Repair
He was standing at the crawlspace hatch with a flashlight in his hand, and he would not put one foot past the edge. It was late October, the first real north…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Heat Pump He Fixed Alone Because Everyone Expected Him To
She met me at the back door holding a manila folder with every invoice that air conditioner had ever produced. Before I got my name out, she said, "Nobody else…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Heat Pump Verdict He Decided On Before I Arrived
He met me in the driveway holding a capacitor still in the box, and before I had my truck door shut he told me that was all it needed. It was late July, the…
- The Human Diagnostic
Too Calm to Care, Too Scared to Think: The Repair in Between
She was waiting at the back door with a legal pad before I had the truck in park. It was the middle of April, one of those Oklahoma weeks where the heat runs…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Repair He Couldn't Stop Replaying, Long After It Worked
It's a quarter to one in the morning and the house is dark. A man is sitting on the edge of his bathtub with his phone in his hand, waiting for the furnace to…
- The Human Diagnostic
He Fixed the AC and Grieved a House That Wasn't His
He told me the house never felt cold while I was standing in his back bedroom reading sixty-one degrees off my own thermometer. January, north wind, the kind…
- The Human Diagnostic
Locus of control, self versus circumstance, with a heat pump call as the setting.
He had the flashlight in his hand before I had the truck in park. Late August, one of those weeks where the pavement in Kingfisher is still warm at ten at…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Repair Estimate She Couldn't Accept Without a Second Opinion
He asked me what it was going to cost before I had the lid off the unit, and when I said I didn't know yet, he asked again, slower, like I hadn't heard him…
- The Human Diagnostic
He Was Certain He Was The Reasonable One About The Heat Pump
He told me the last company had been working him, and about nine seconds later he told me exactly what was wrong with his air conditioner and how he knew. Late…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Woman Who Couldn't Believe the Repair Held
By the time I pulled out of the shop she had called three times, and nothing about her job had changed since the first one. First full week of July, heat index…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Repair He Feared Less Because He Could See It Coming
He picked the more expensive repair and looked relieved doing it. Late August, a brick ranch on the edge of town, the kind built in the nineties with the…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Worry She Was Certain Showed While the Heat Pump Ran
She had been terrified about the money for two hours and I had no idea, because she thought it was written on her face. Early spring, a rent house out toward…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Repair She Put Off Because Bad Luck Happens To Others
He agreed with every word I said about the failure, and then explained why it would not happen to him. Composite call. This is four or five conversations…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Man Who Had to Believe He Broke the Heat Pump
He had set the thermostat to sixty on a hundred and four degree day, and he genuinely believed that would make it cool faster. Mid July, a two story on the…
- The Human Diagnostic
Duct Repair: She Wanted The Same One Back
She asked me if I could put the same one back in. The exact same one. And she was not being difficult, she was being loyal. Late June, a brick ranch south of…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Ninety Dollars She Saved That Cost Her A Furnace
She had saved ninety dollars a year for six years, and it cost her forty two hundred. I want to be careful with this one, because there is a version of it that…
- The Human Diagnostic
The AC Repair He Diagnosed Himself And Got Wrong
The man knew exactly what was wrong with his air conditioner until I asked him to show me. It was a Thursday in the first week of August, out past the co-op on…
- The Human Diagnostic
Fixing the AC and cooling tempers
The house was eighty-four degrees when I walked in. That number matters. Not because eighty-four is the hottest house I have ever walked into. It is not. I…
- The Human Diagnostic
The AC He Fixed Himself and Loved Beyond Its Worth
I am driving out to a call right now where I already know the hardest part of the job will not be the equipment. It will be the man. Not because he is…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Repair Each of Them Swore Another Had Called In
I once worked on a rental house where the furnace had been dead for three weeks in November, and not one single person had decided it was their job to call…
- The Human Diagnostic
He Was Sure the Old Owner Deserved the Broken Heat Pump
I left a house this afternoon where the furnace was not the real problem. The furnace was just old and tired and finally quit, the way furnaces do. The real…
- The Human Diagnostic
Why the Familiar Heat Pump Man Felt Like a Friend
A woman hired me once for a reason that had nothing to do with whether I was any good. She told me so herself, right there on the porch, before I had even…
- The Human Diagnostic
I Blamed His Temper, Then I Saw the Dead Heat Pump
A man decided I was a crook before I finished writing up the diagnosis. I could see it land on his face. I had told him his system needed a new condenser fan…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Face I Held Together While the Repair Fell Apart
A customer once told me I was the calmest man she had ever met. I thanked her. I did not tell her the truth, which was that I had been up since four with a…
- The Human Diagnostic
Her Fear Reached Out Instead of Running, Heat Pump Down
Her air conditioner had been dead for two days in August, and the first thing she did when I walked in was offer me lunch. Not water. Not a chair. Lunch. She…
- The Human Diagnostic
Why She Repaid a Stranger's Good Turn at the Heat Pump
A woman in Kingfisher tried to pay me for a fuse I had replaced on a fan motor. It was a two-dollar fuse. I had been at the house for fifteen minutes total. I…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Heat Pump He Talked Himself Into Loving
A man in Kingfisher, six weeks after he had bought a system he had been on the fence about, told me he was so glad he had gone with that one. He said the other…
- The Human Diagnostic
Why His Gut Ruled Out the Repair That Worked
A woman in Watonga told me, in her kitchen, that she did not want the variable-speed unit because it sounded like it was going to be complicated. She did not…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Heat Pump He Defaulted To Without Thinking
A customer in Okeene, after I had spread three replacement quotes on her kitchen table and walked her through them for forty minutes, looked at me and said…
- The Human Diagnostic
Why She Couldn't Unhear the Heat Pump After That Day
A customer in Hennessey told me, two weeks after I had installed a new heat pump in her house, that she could not believe how many heat pumps were going in…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Warning He Only Believed After the Repair
A woman in Dover told me, after I had condemned her compressor, that she had known all along it was going to go out this summer. She said she had felt it. She…
- The Human Diagnostic
He Praises Old Iron and Forgets Each Failed Repair
A man in Calumet pointed at his furnace in the basement and told me they do not make them like they used to. The furnace was forty-one years old. It still ran…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Heat Pump He Explained Past Her, Never Knowing
A homeowner in Crescent stopped me in the middle of an explanation last spring and asked me, very politely, what a coil was. I had been talking for about three…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Repair He Was Sure Everyone Would Recall
A man in Hennessey, fifty-something, met me at the curb before I could get out of the truck. He asked me to back into the driveway so the company name on the…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Heat Pump He Judged by His Own Comfort Alone
A woman in Okarche told me, on the phone, that her whole house was cold. She wanted me out the same day. I asked her where in the house she had measured. She…
- The Human Diagnostic
Why He Kept Rescuing a Heat Pump Long Past Saving
He had a folder. That is how I knew before he said a word. A man met me in his garage with a manila folder full of receipts, and he laid them out on the…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Fear of Losing What the Heat Pump Still Gave
She kept patting the side of the furnace like it was a horse. It was an old gas furnace in a closet off the hallway, thirty-one years old, and it was done…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Number in Her Head Before the Heat Pump Call
A man met me at the door with a number already in his hand. Eighty-five dollars. He said it before I had my boots off. Another company quoted me eighty-five to…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Winters It Survived That Made Him Sure of the AC
A customer told me last summer, in a kitchen in Loyal, that her air conditioner had been running for twenty-two years and so she figured it was going to make…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Repair She Refused Because Letting Go Felt Like Loss
I had a man near Okeene tell me, when I came to look at his fifteen-year-old condenser, that his unit was worth more than the new one I would sell him. I asked…
- The Human Diagnostic
She Weighed One Bad Repair Over a Year of Good
I had a customer call me a couple of winters ago, furious. He had been a customer of mine for ten years. I had installed his system, maintained it, replaced…
- The Human Diagnostic
Why One Kind Word Made Her Trust the Whole Heat Pump
I had a customer in Calumet tell me once that his last HVAC guy was excellent because the truck was always clean. I asked him what the work had been like. He…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Heat Pump He Chose Only After I Stopped Selling It
A man in Hennessey told me, two summers ago, that he was not going to replace his system no matter what I said. I had not said anything yet. I had been in his…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Repair She Refused Because Letting Go Felt Like Losing
There is a moment, in a lot of my replacement conversations, when the customer goes quiet. I have laid out the diagnostic. I have explained the failure. I have…
- The Human Diagnostic
He Trusted the Newest Repair Over the Whole Year
I had a customer tell me last fall, in his living room in Cashion, that capacitors should cost forty dollars. He told me this with the same kind of confidence…
- The Human Diagnostic
The First Guess That Anchored His Heat Pump Judgment
A woman called me out to a house in Dover last June. She had a fifteen-year-old air-source heat pump that had stopped cooling. Another company had been there…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Heat Pump He Thought He'd Already Outsmarted
I got a call last August from a house on the north edge of Okarche. The owner had been working on his own central air for two days. He told me on the phone…
- The Human Diagnostic
He Blamed the AC He'd Already Decided Was Broken
A man called me out to a house south of Hennessey last March. His furnace was making a noise he did not like. He had decided, before I got there, that the…
- The Human Diagnostic
The More He Knew, the Less He Checked the Heat Pump
There is a kind of technician I have hired three or four times in forty-five years and let go of every single one. He is not lazy. He is not stupid. The…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Heat Pump She Suddenly Saw on Every Street
A customer in Hennessey told me, two weeks after I installed a new heat pump in her house, that she could not believe how many heat pumps were going in around…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Old Furnace Repair That Proved Nothing
A man in Calumet pointed at the furnace in his basement and told me they do not make them like they used to. It was forty-one years old and still running. He…
- The Human Diagnostic
She Trusted My HVAC Truck Before I Fixed A Thing
A woman hired me once for a reason that had nothing to do with whether I was any good. She told me so herself, right there on the porch, before I had even…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Thermostat Problem That Was Really a Cold Chair
A woman in Okarche told me on the phone that her whole house was cold. She wanted me out the same day. I asked her where in the house she had measured. She had…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Uniform of Calm I Put On for a Furnace Repair
A customer once told me I was the calmest man she had ever met. I thanked her. I did not tell her the truth, which was that I had been up since four that…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Air Conditioner Repair Where She Fed Me Lunch
Her air conditioner had been dead for two days in an Oklahoma August, and the first thing she did when I walked in was hand me lunch. Not water. Not a chair. A…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Broken Compressor She Swore She Predicted
A woman in Dover told me, right after I condemned her compressor, that she had known all along it was going to go out this summer. She said she had felt it…
- The Human Diagnostic
The Furnace Repair She Remembered Wrong On Purpose
A woman called me a year after a job to thank me for a furnace repair I barely remembered. It had been a long one. Her furnace quit on the coldest week of the…
- The Human Diagnostic
The $2 Fuse She Tried to Pay Me For
A woman in Kingfisher tried to pay me for a fuse I had replaced on her fan motor. It was a two-dollar fuse. I had been at the house fifteen minutes, and I told…