Time for our annual home repair SNAFU!!! HVAC this time...(FIXED! Now I'm cold!)

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65LoveAffair

65LoveAffair

Whovian
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The F*ck-up Fairies have been here earlier than usual this year. #-o Last year it was the sewer drain. This year it's our A/C. I noticed today that it wasn't blowing cold at all. :banghead: After doing a little investigative work, I can tell you that neither the A coil inside nor the outside coil are frozen up. We also took this opportunity to clean the coils out since we accessed them. I'm leaning toward us being low on freon. The suction line is not cold to the touch. The weird thing, and what has me worried, is that it was fine earlier today, and then BOOM, blowing barely cool air only. I'm hoping we don't have a leak. And if we do, I'm hoping it is in an easily accessible location. Fingers are crossed.

The good news in all of this is that Angie is the office manager for a local HVAC company. We'll still have some out of pocket expenses, just not as bad as if we were a regular customer. I just don't know if we're going to be able to get this taken care of this evening. And it is really getting hot in the house! Will is going to my mother-in-law's place. At least he'll be cool. I just hope the heat doesn't get to Angie and me. Kind of makes me wish we still had a window unit we could run. Anyway, I'll let you all know tomorrow if we've survived... :violent2:
 
Can you take the temp at the return air (air filter) and take the temp at a supply air grill in the ceiling or floor witch ever you have, If your high limit switch was tripped it may just be that, it protects your compressor, it may have a red button re-set you can re-set !
 
65LoveAffair said:
The F*ck-up Fairies have been here earlier than usual this year. #-o Last year it was the sewer drain. This year it's our A/C. I noticed today that it wasn't blowing cold at all. :banghead: After doing a little investigative work, I can tell you that neither the A coil inside nor the outside coil are frozen up. We also took this opportunity to clean the coils out since we accessed them. I'm leaning toward us being low on freon. The suction line is not cold to the touch. The weird thing, and what has me worried, is that it was fine earlier today, and then BOOM, blowing barely cool air only. I'm hoping we don't have a leak. And if we do, I'm hoping it is in an easily accessible location. Fingers are crossed.

The good news in all of this is that Angie is the office manager for a local HVAC company. We'll still have some out of pocket expenses, just not as bad as if we were a regular customer. I just don't know if we're going to be able to get this taken care of this evening. And it is really getting hot in the house! Will is going to my mother-in-law's place. At least he'll be cool. I just hope the heat doesn't get to Angie and me. Kind of makes me wish we still had a window unit we could run. Anyway, I'll let you all know tomorrow if we've survived... :violent2:
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But, but, what if we don't hear from you?

Seriously, good luck with that. When you said "BOOM" you didn't actually mean it went BOOM, did you?
 
And this is why I installed a sight glass on my liquid line near the air handler. Don't have to guess if it has a low charge, etc.. I can just look.
 
That blows. Sorry for the poor joke.

Our central air went out last year. Frank and John were both very generous and gave us a window unit each. That is still how we are staying cool. Two 5K units cooling about 1K sq ft. Takes a while but it gets it there. We just leave them running. Our furnace bit the dust in January. I have not ventured to see what's goin on there. I guess I need to before long. lol

Hopefully you will get it goin. I wish I was closer. I don't have a lot of HVAC experience but we could drink some beer and just stare at it together.
 
memike said:
Can you take the temp at the return air (air filter) and take the temp at a supply air grill in the ceiling or floor witch ever you have, If your high limit switch was tripped it may just be that, it protects your compressor, it may have a red button re-set you can re-set !
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I don't think ours has a reset button. At least, I've never seen one. We checked inside the unit, and we're not getting any error codes (little red flashing LED). It's blinking slowly, which indicates normal operation. It would flash four times if there was a problem with the limit switch. I remember that, because we had to replace the limit switch in the dead of winter about five years ago when all of a sudden we had no heat. It was an easy fix. I just hope we get that lucky this time. Thanks for the suggestion.

Revhendo said:
But, but, what if we don't hear from you?

Seriously, good luck with that. When you said "BOOM" you didn't actually mean it went BOOM, did you?
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If you don't hear from us, well... :dontknow:
And no, it didn't actually go "BOOM" Although, with everything else going wrong around here, it wouldn't surprise me.

rednesss said:
And this is why I installed a sight glass on my liquid line near the air handler. Don't have to guess if it has a low charge, etc.. I can just look.
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If this does turn out to be a low freon issue, I think we are going to borrow your example and do the same thing. Thanks for the suggestion.

RustyRatRod said:
That blows. Sorry for the poor joke.

Our central air went out last year. Frank and John were both very generous and gave us a window unit each. That is still how we are staying cool. Two 5K units cooling about 1K sq ft. Takes a while but it gets it there. We just leave them running. Our furnace bit the dust in January. I have not ventured to see what's goin on there. I guess I need to before long. lol

Hopefully you will get it goin. I wish I was closer. I don't have a lot of HVAC experience but we could drink some beer and just stare at it together.
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You crack me up, Rob! I needed the laugh, thanks.
 
Well, here's an update. My wife, the HVAC employee, had the bright idea of turning the AC on, and then going outside to see if things kicked on outside. Well, all we heard was a humming noise. So, I think I can safely say it's not a freon issue. Maybe we'll get lucky and it'll just be the capacitor or the fan motor. Hopefully not anything worse. Cross your fingers for us!
 
So the outdoor fan is not running? Can you tell if the compressor came on?
 
65LoveAffair said:
All we hear is a humming noise when things should be kicking on. I'm really hoping it's just a bad start capacitor.
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Try taking something, "a stick," LOL and see if you can turn the OD fan blades. Maybe the motor bearings are seized
 
could be a simple blown fuse at disconect, if disconect is fused , could only have one leg of power , can check with meter, or burnt contacter, or its just humming because it doesn't know the words lol
 
I got some pictures of my wife working on the AC unit outside. I know, I know. Pics or it didn't happen, right? Well, here ya go!

View attachment MightyWarrior.jpg

This is what we found when we opened the panel on the outside. YUCK!

View attachment YuckA.jpg

A closeup of the capacitor and the crud on it.

View attachment YuckB.jpg

What these pictures don't show is what sent one of our other neighbors, an actual HVAC tech and not the office manager like my wife, running away. There were a few other things inside this panel that we cleaned out before we started poking around.

Last year, while walking past the AC unit outside, we smelled something dead but could never figure it out. Well, we did today. These were inside the electrical panel. Not sure if they got fried, or what, but it was a momma snake and some babies. Emphasis on the WAS!

View attachment Stowaway.jpg
View attachment StowawayJr1.jpg
View attachment StowawayJr2.jpg

So, that's our fun for the evening. Tomorrow, when the supply house opens, we're gonna get a new start capacitor and see if that fixes anything. If nothing else, it'll at least look better than the cruddy thing we've got now! I hope my wife is there when the old capacitor is discharged before removal. I want to see the look on her face when it pops! I'll update more when we have a little more info. Thanks for all the suggestions!
 
LMAO So your wife really IS a tech? That's actually not a start cap, it's a dual run cap for both the compressor and fan. I would bet it's a good bet for the moment.

"Better" condensing units have start AND run caps, and a start relay. They will start more reliably, especially when they get older. "Hard start" kits are a halfway add-on
 
67Dart273 said:
LMAO So your wife really IS a tech? That's actually not a start cap, it's a dual run cap for both the compressor and fan. I would bet it's a good bet for the moment.

"Better" condensing units have start AND run caps, and a start relay. They will start more reliably, especially when they get older. "Hard start" kits are a halfway add-on
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She's not a tech. She's the office manager. But she's not afraid of getting her hands dirty. Our neighbor, who is a tech for the same company, pushed the "NOPE" button when he saw the dead snakes and hightailed it out of there, but my wife stuck around. Snakes don't bother her. If it had been a spider, however, that would have been a much different reaction out of her.
 
65LoveAffair said:
Well, here's an update. My wife, the HVAC employee, had the bright idea of turning the AC on, and then going outside to see if things kicked on outside. Well, all we heard was a humming noise. So, I think I can safely say it's not a freon issue. Maybe we'll get lucky and it'll just be the capacitor or the fan motor. Hopefully not anything worse. Cross your fingers for us!
Click to expand...

Mine did exactly this a few years ago, when it did of course it had to be the hottest week of the summer :banghead:

Mine is an older central air unit from the early 80's and it would turn on but fan would not spin. I took the screen/cover off and gave the fan a spinor kick start and it would kick on and fan would move and work fine....till it turned off and then would not start up again unless I spun the fan as it was trying to start up....I did this just about everytime to get the a/c to work. I tried lubing up all the fans/motor moving parts but nothing, motor was seizing up. Went to a local electric motor place here and they had a motor in stock, they even removed the fan and installed it on the new motor and installed it and it works just fine (knock on wood:glasses7:) and blows nice again, plus the price was under $100. I hope this unit works good for awhile yet, had to replace the furnace 2 winters ago and that works great, but the A/C unit is getting pretty old now....

I would check the motor that runs your fan, maybe it can be rebuilt or replaced.
 
65LoveAffair said:
She's not a tech. She's the office manager. But she's not afraid of getting her hands dirty. Our neighbor, who is a tech for the same company, pushed the "NOPE" button when he saw the dead snakes and hightailed it out of there, but my wife stuck around. Snakes don't bother her. If it had been a spider, however, that would have been a much different reaction out of her.
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Are you kidding me....Your neighbor is a tech and bailed on you because of some DEAD snakes! What an ***.How does he keep his job.? Sure would hate to count on him in a pinch.:protest:
 
We had earwigs crawl into our contactor and cause it to not work a few years ago. They are disgusting looking little bugs with pincers on their tails. Mice had also stripped the thermostat wires and they were grounding out on the case. Bugs and critters can cause problems.
 
Back in Time said:
Are you kidding me....Your neighbor is a tech and bailed on you because of some DEAD snakes! What an ***.How does he keep his job? Sure would hate to count on him in a pinch.:protest:
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Simple. His sister owns the company. Nepotism is alive and well in the 21st century. I'm not going to complain, though. They gave my wife a job when we really needed the money. Besides, he wasn't on the clock and was just lending a helping hand. If he was actually getting paid I think he would have stuck around. Emphasis on the THINK portion of that sentence.
 
toolmanmike said:
We had earwigs crawl into our contactor and cause it to not work a few years ago. They are disgusting looking little bugs with pincers on their tails. Mice had also stripped the thermostat wires and they were grounding out on the case. Bugs and critters can cause problems.
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I think the contactor is okay. When I use a "stick" and push the contactor in so it makes contact, the motor hums, so it's getting juice across. I just don't think the capacitor has enough oomph left in it to get things going. Or it's completely blown, even though it's not obviously deformed. I guess I'll find out tomorrow.
 
I am a AC tech.
IF the thermostat is set for cool, there should be 24 VAC across the contactor coil terminals on the side of the contactor and it should be pulled in. With it pulled in, there should be 240 VAC on both the line side and load side of the contactor. With 240 VAC on the load side and the fan is not turning, it could be the cap or the fan motor itself.
I wouldn't let it stay like that for very long as the compressor will overheat without air moving.
We have meters that allow us to check capacitors to see if they're still good.
We've seen rusty ones like that which were just fine. If it's swollen or leaking, it's bad.
We've seen it all on outside units: snakes, mice, rats, lizards, etc.
Based on the info you posted, I suspect a bad cap as well.
FYI...Not always, but usually when caps go bad, the motor or compressor is not far behind.
 
You need to get a meter that reads microfarads. It will have a setting that has mF or uF on it. The capacitor looks swollen which indicates failure, as does the rust. Make sure power is off with a trusted meter before touching anything. (The value of the capacitor should be on the label. Unplug leads before testing.)
 
Well, if it's going to be hot in the house tonight, you may want to sleep without any clothes to keep cool, and you know what that can lead to.... Nudge, nudge, wink, wink...
 
krazykuda said:
Well, if it's going to be hot in the house tonight, you may want to sleep without any clothes to keep cool, and you know what that can lead to.... Nudge, nudge, wink, wink...
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A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat. Say no more, say no more!
 
Ours went out a few summers ago. I posted for help here. Found out it was the capacitor. I found one for 12 dollars SHIPPED and fixed it myself.

Unfortunately last year, the compressor gave up so we got what we got. LOL

Good luck man. I hope you get it goin for cheap. We're prayin for yall.
 
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