roger wiegand
07-20-2020, 4:09 PM
We're having our first triple digit temperature days of the summer (and I hope the last!) so of course our central air conditioner died. As did everyone else's. (A lot of folks in NE wouldn't consider turning on the AC at a temperature below 95, Yankee frugality being what it is, so this weekend was the first time this season for lots of systems). Called for repairs, could get an appointment for some time in August. Thanks, but it will be fall by then, I hope.
Since the outside unit was dead to the world I hoped it might be something simple like a bad contactor. Opened it up and found a bug farm, with years worth of accumulated desiccated bodies. Took it to the shop, blew out the corpses, tested for appropriate continuity or lack thereof, and put it back in. Partial joy, the compressor hummed now but the fan didn't go on. Hmmm. Took a stick and gave the fan a spin and it whirred up to life. More partial joy. Everything was humming and spinning but there was little, if any cooling. The data strongly suggested a bad starter capacitor at the least.
I knew I'd need the capacitor unless I'd completely burned out the compressor by running it with no cooling, so I ran down to my friendly local HVAC store and picked up both a new cap and contactor (total bill, with tax $34), reinstalled them, and Victory! Big time cooling, which by this time we needed. All for 1/3 of the "diagnostic fee" I would have paid to get a service guy to show up next month. Yay!
Since the outside unit was dead to the world I hoped it might be something simple like a bad contactor. Opened it up and found a bug farm, with years worth of accumulated desiccated bodies. Took it to the shop, blew out the corpses, tested for appropriate continuity or lack thereof, and put it back in. Partial joy, the compressor hummed now but the fan didn't go on. Hmmm. Took a stick and gave the fan a spin and it whirred up to life. More partial joy. Everything was humming and spinning but there was little, if any cooling. The data strongly suggested a bad starter capacitor at the least.
I knew I'd need the capacitor unless I'd completely burned out the compressor by running it with no cooling, so I ran down to my friendly local HVAC store and picked up both a new cap and contactor (total bill, with tax $34), reinstalled them, and Victory! Big time cooling, which by this time we needed. All for 1/3 of the "diagnostic fee" I would have paid to get a service guy to show up next month. Yay!