Last night my AC stopped working.
Looked up troubleshooting tips and did the following
Checked breakers, none tripped. Flipped ac/furnace one off and back on.
Replaced air filter
Set thermostat to off and back to cool
Flipped switch at furnace off and back on
Checked cutoff box outside. Pulled out and plugged back in the switch.
The furnace pushes air through the vents and the thermostat turns it on and off correctly. Thermo doesn't use batteries, gets power from the wall.
Did not notice any ice build up.
Don't know how to find the float tray so can't see if it's full but water seems to drain outside just fine.
Condensor is my guess. Doesn't make any noise, not even the buzz it usually does before kicking on.
Pulled the side panel off. No family of mice or chewed wires. Capacitor
seems ok but i'm thinking it's the culprit.
Anyways, have a tech coming out friday afternoon. But is there anything I can try or check before that to try and get it working sooner?
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Even though you don't have frosting/icing, it's probably worth giving the insulation for the tubing a good check and try to plug up any holes in the insulation.
Another piece of info, the AC was running fine when I got home yesterday at 76 degrees. Dropped it to 74 and about 30 mins lates was when I noticed warm air from the vents. Not sure if that means anything past coincidence though.
You said you changed it so make sure no wires or anything are loose inside.
but they're listening to every word I say
It's a newer digital model. I did not check to make sure all the wires were tight behind it though. Going to do that.
Bad contact switch and it's leaking freon.
Gonna replace the switch, refill and do a leak seal
$800
oof
This is good. The last time I had a situation like your happen, it was capacitors over and over, then the fan motor, then finally a new unit for twelve thousand dollars.
Cheap part and a maintenance is so much better than it could have been.
Yeah, i'm finding out it's better than I thought with the costs other people have incurred.
Think a wise choice on my part would be to add major appliance to my insurance.
if your unit is older than the warranty, definitely.
800 isn’t bad during the summer, unfortunately getting an AC repaired during the summer or a furnace/boiler repaired during the winter coats about 50% more.
I’ve seen full systems go 10k+ during the summer, if it’s a weekend it’s even more expensive.
If your A/C is fucking up get it fixed during the winter.
I'd be concerned about the leaking; depending on where it is/how bad the leak is you may need to totally replace that part of the unit. Trying to find pinhole leaks can be tedious.
Tech did a 'leak seal' so i'm hoping that takes care of it. I also don't know what that process is.
Freon is super expensive due to regulatory taxes on it. My father worked with commercial A/C units on container ships as well as home units, so i was dragged along with him as his helper on many jobs. I remember one story he told me about a job he was called to and found a large pipe was broken and all the freon in one of these huge units just escaped into the air.
Heres the tedious and expensive method to find leaks:
a bottle of soap water and an eye dropper. Look for bubbles around the weld seams.
(Again, i watched my father do this endless times. it sounds simple but it works.