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The A/C Died... Again


bgavin

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2 hours ago, DeaconKC said:

Our retirement home we bought last year is beautiful, but it has a HVAC system too small for the house. SO it works itself ridiculously hard and the bill is terrible. Looks like I will have to pry open the wallet and buy a unit proper sized for the house. It has a 2 1/2 ton unit and should be running a 3 1/12 or even 4 ton unit.

 

What is the square footage (air conditioned only) of the house? How old is the house? How new are the windows? How is the attic/wall insulation?

 

 A 3.5 - 4 ton unit moves a bunch of air quickly. A 2.5 ton unit should be fine for a 1,500 or less sq ft house. Installing a too large of a unit for a house will make it uncomfortable due to short cycling and never removing the humidity, which is what an ac system is designed to do. Also, if your existing ductwork is to small to handle the increased air flow it probably won't help cool the house anymore than it does now. You could also "blimp" the ductwork and possible damage it.

 

Consult a professional before changing anything. 

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I doubt he was just gonna walk in to a Lennox dealer and cash n carry a 4 ton coil unit.

Probably gonna be a hvac guy involved at some point

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Start run capacitors are the number one cause of A/C failure. The capacitors used to last a lifetime but back in the 90s they went from huge and reliable to small and fail often. Now, they have gone to dual capacitors, one part for the fan, one part for the compressor, so if you need an OEM, it cost money. If only one side is bad, that section can be removed from the circuit and a stand alone capacitor of the same rating can be used.

 

Any well that can get surface run off can develop iron bacteria. The iron bacteria can grow and fill the cracks and voids that water seeps from. This can slow of stop the regeneration rate of a well. The well can be cleaned and shocked to kill the iron bacteria back, but one it has it, it's never totally gone and will come back. Dumping water back into a well can also introduce iron bacteria.

 

My old house had iron bacteria in the well because the original top was below the ground level so any time it rained water would run into the well casing and drag microbes with it. I had to dump chlorine pool tablets in it every few months to keep the bacteria manageable.

 

I had a client that decided that dumping cooling water back down in his well was a great idea. It caused iron bacteria to form and it lined all of the cooling piping in the plant and stopped up cooling coils. I tried repeatedly on why they needed to kill it off and clean or replace lines but he was an engineer from Purdue and I was just a lowly service guy. I could tell when they were treating the water. Huge chunks of bacteria, that looked like chunks of leather, would clog up the pump strainers. Instead of keeping up with it so it would finally clear, they would get tired of the constant strainer cleaning and stop the treatment... until coils would clog up again and they would start all over again. Dealing with that plant was physically and emotionally draining.

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My A/C had a bad dual-run cap.
$175 for the part "Made in the USA"

"he was an engineer from Purdue and I was just a lowly service guy. "
I've seen a bunch of them... "Too yeers ago, I culd not spel enjineer... now I are one"
No doubt a Masters Degree from Purdue in Woke Studies.

My holier-than-thou guy was not an engineer, but an M.D. doing vanity plastic surgery.
He was a true artisan in Boobs and Butts, but a clueless moron in computer systems.
I fired him as a client.

I'm thinking it will be well (pun) worth the service call fee to have them clean/inspect the condensing unit each Spring.

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A bit off-topic for HVAC, but I have been having fits with the phone company.  We have three land lines in our house.  Line 1 is our listed number. Line 2 is a number my wife uses (and doesn't want me answering because she says I don't take messages correctly).  She does have an answering machine.  Line 3 is also unlisted, but I use it for clubs and such, so that I don't tie up Line 1 for receiving those spam calls!  About a week ago, Lines 1 and 3 died! Line 2 was untouched by the problem.  I called/emailed the phone company.  Took them from Friday to Tuesday to get a technician out.  He couldn't find the problem.  Called the phone company again. Sent out a second technician.  He couldn't get things working!  Third tech came out and troubleshot one of the problems on Line 1 to their switching office.  Got 1 and 3 working, but with a terrible buzzing on both.  Called again! Different tech comes out and traces the buzz to an apparent short circuit in our finished basement walls somewhere.  Only way to fix the problem is to disconnect the in-wall wiring AND RUN A LONG LINE JUST LAYING ON THE FLOOR!  I asked if he could run the line around the outside of the house and drop it in through an unfinished or even a window frame. "Oh, no! We don't do that! Have to call a contractor."  So he hooks up a long cord to one of the places near my computer.  I asked him to use connectors on one end so I could disconnect the cord, re-route it myself and plug it back in.  No, he hardwires the cord to a couple of line wires that plug into one of the phone.  But he doesn't do a thing about the phone in my downstairs bathroom (a handy thing to have.)  Unless the short is on the wires in the wall there, he could reconnect it to the "floor" cord from the junction box.  Having company all weekend, so will have to call the phone company again!  :angry::angry::angry:  If Radio Shack still had a store near me with the various phone jacks, I could do it myself, but the last guy had a bunch of special permanent connectors, I don't think I can mess with!

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22 hours ago, Cypress Sun said:

 

What is the square footage (air conditioned only) of the house? How old is the house? How new are the windows? How is the attic/wall insulation?

 

 A 3.5 - 4 ton unit moves a bunch of air quickly. A 2.5 ton unit should be fine for a 1,500 or less sq ft house. Installing a too large of a unit for a house will make it uncomfortable due to short cycling and never removing the humidity, which is what an ac system is designed to do. Also, if your existing ductwork is to small to handle the increased air flow it probably won't help cool the house anymore than it does now. You could also "blimp" the ductwork and possible damage it.

 

Consult a professional before changing anything. 

The house is 2200 square feet. 13 years old, well insulated with good windows.

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2 hours ago, DeaconKC said:

The house is 2200 square feet. 13 years old, well insulated with good windows.

You would be well served to find a contractor that has the ability to do a heat load calculation and size the unit that way. Your unit sounds undersized for the square footing but with the efficient building materials used these days it may be properly sized. Generally speaking it's better to run a unit longer to remove the humidity. In modern variable-speed units, the unit NEVER turns off. The blower and compressor slow down to match the load. Having too large of a unit will cause the house to feel clammy, cool, and damp.

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Just now, Cholla said:

You would be well served to find a contractor that has the ability to do a heat load calculation and size the unit that way. Your unit sounds undersized for the square footing but with the efficient building materials used these days it may be properly sized. Generally speaking it's better to run a unit longer to remove the humidity. In modern variable-speed units, the unit NEVER turns off. The blower and compressor slow down to match the load. Having too large of a unit will cause the house to feel clammy, cool, and damp.

Yup, my suspicion is the original builder found a way to save a few bucks and now I am paying for it!

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FWIW, I hope the HVAC contractor has access to the sizing software that will avoid all the errors and sloppy work found in so many low wage installation monkeys. 

All they have to do is feed the basic measurements into the software and it will do the accurate calculations.
Of course... garbage in = garbage out.

The monkeys that did my HVAC replacement in 1998 were cretins.

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7 hours ago, Cholla said:

You would be well served to find a contractor that has the ability to do a heat load calculation and size the unit that way. Your unit sounds undersized for the square footing but with the efficient building materials used these days it may be properly sized. Generally speaking it's better to run a unit longer to remove the humidity. In modern variable-speed units, the unit NEVER turns off. The blower and compressor slow down to match the load. Having too large of a unit will cause the house to feel clammy, cool, and damp.

 

I think Cholla is spot on. The unit is probably undersized.

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I put my window AC in Friday it was up to 80 ..it sure worked  wearing long pants and long sleeve shirt this morning 

looking out over the SF bay  nice cool fog 

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