BEWARE: Primary Bedroom A/C spews MILDEWED AIR
We chose this condo because it billed itself as LUXURY with Tri-Zone A/C and the positive reviews helped give us confidence to select it. However, this condo needs some real upgrades, mainly the a/c, the overhead fan and the screen doors. We paid over $5200 for a very uncomfortable, frustrating experience.
My family and I were initially pleased to arrive at the condo. It delivers on good location, spaciousness and a nice pool. However the ductless a/c unit in the Master bedroom only worked for one of our 7 nights. The a/c was already on when we arrived. The bedroom was stuffy and humid. The remote said it was on AUTO mode, 66 degrees and high fan. We turned on the overhead fan to move the air around. It made a grating loud scraping sound every time it rotated. We couldn’t sleep with the sound, so we gave up on using the overhead fan.
That first night my husband and I were pretty hot with the a/c barely cooling the room; sleeping on polyester sheets didn’t help the situation.
The next day I contacted Jude to ask him to fix the a/c, the fan and replace burnt lightbulbs and a dysfunctional sensor lidded kitchen trashcan. He responded promptly and sent his maintenance man to look at the situation that day while we were out of the condo.
Bulbs were replaced, a new trash can was installed but the fan still made the scraping noise. Jude informed us an HVAC tech would come inspect the a/c unit the following morning at 8:00am (not my idea of a vacation itinerary, but we were desperate). That night the a/c miraculously seemed to cool the room. The next morning the HVAC guy looked at the units, did some tinkering and told us the remote was on the wrong setting: AUTO and had to be on COOL. He said this was a common mistake (and at this point I wondered if this was so, why weren’t there explicit instructions left by the manager regarding the particulars of the a/c remotes???)
That night, the a/c in our bedroom spewed mildewed air. It was on the COOL setting as we were instructed. The air blowing from the a/c smelled musty and fishy. Our lungs felt tight. It was a toxic environment. We ended up turning the a/c off and sleeping with the windows open but couldn’t bear to use the loud over-head fan. The bedroom is pretty stuffy so it was not a comfortable experience whatsoever. We kept the lanai open with the screen doors shut to attempt some cross vent. Meanwhile we noticed that we were getting a lot of bugs flying in through a gap in the lanai screen doors at night. They would fly up and congregate in the loft bedroom where my kids slept. The front screen door also had large gaps and did not have a true seal on the door. My daughter got several large mosquito bites that kept her (and therefore us) up at night. So from then on we felt we needed to close the lanai at night. I thought we might sleep in the living room on the pull-out sofa using the living room a/c unit. However, when we turned that on, it too started to blow mildew fumes. Only the 2nd floor/ loft bedroom a/c seemed to function properly.
My husband contacted Jude about our continued a/c frustrations; that it was blowing mildew air and he said he would “look into it.” But nothing was ever done to fix it or help us feel more comfortable for the duration of our stay.
We did not want to have to spend our vacation and time visiting family having to request repairs and trouble shoot an outdated condo. When I checked out and informed Jude of how I felt, he told me the a/c had been in HEAT mode and that is why we had problems; a total lie and insult. He also said we should have had the louvers for the front door window open for cross vent. (And of course I did have them open but they did very little to help the situation). Mahalo for the gaslighting.