OT- HOT in Texas!

[GAHorn]

The son of my crash-pad landlady called me last week to ask what to do about the central AC unit. He said the Inside unit was running fine, but putting out hot air, but the "outside" unit was not running. I was out of state and told him if he could confirm it had electrical power to it, then by long-distance I could not do much, for him to call an AC repairman. He did not have sufficient confidence in his skills to check for electrical power but he said the outside unit was absolutely "silent" and the circuit breaker was not "popped", ...so he called an AC repairman and the guy condemned the compressor/condenser unit and wanted to sell him a replacement for $1700. The repairman told him the city (Dallas) would soon require that all new units not use freon and instead use a friendlier refrigerant, therefore now was the time to convert and he could do the whole house for $3200.

My friend called me back to ask if that was reasonable and I suggested he try to find a used unit. I suggested he ask the guy how many "whole units" of the new type he's installed lately, and how many of the units he'd removed had serviceable compressor/condenser units and what would he sell a used unit for.

Long story shorter is that a local home-builder overheard the story and offered to install a new (freon) compressor/condenser unit for $1300, so my friend did it and feels good about it. Fine.

Now, here it is Friday, July 3rd, and I wake up to find the temp inside my own house to be 83-degrees. It's only 80 outdoors.

Wouldn't you know...day before a holiday weekend and I've got a full day of work already laid out to get ready for guests and my damn AC unit has failed! What's the chance of anyone making a service-call and being able to fix it on the 3rd of July? Yep. Zip.

The inside "air handler" unit is running, ...So I go ouside and find my outside compressor/condeser unit not running. I remove the side-panel and check for electrical power and find 240 volts at the input side of some complicated "relay" which is "humming' ... but no power on the output side where the wires go to the compressor and condenser fan. I cut a couple pieces of wire and jumpered across the relays 240-volt connectors and ....VOILA!... the compressor and fan start running! Yayyy!

I drive over to Marble Falls, TX (nearest town) to the AC distributor (Robt. Madden Inc (RMI) and the guy is helping a customer. I wait my turn. The customer leaves and I ask the guy if he can help me find a replacement relay, part number (I had copied the number off the failed relay) and he said he didn't have that exact part but he had a generic replacement.

Fine. How much?

$16.75.

I pull out my checkbook and he says, "and there's a Fifty-Dollar "opening fee" because it's Fridaythe 3rd, day before the holiday." I thought he was joking.

He wasn't. He said it would be $16.75 plus the $50 for selling it to me on the 3rd of July.

I forgot my anger-management courtesies at that point, and reminded him I'd bought a $7,000 AC unit from him 8 years ago and it'd be the LAST time I EVER buy anything from him again. I stormed out.

Now, I'm sitting in my Jeep, sweltering in the heat and wondering if I hadn't made a serious mistake by losing my temper and telling-off perhaps the only guy in this small town who might have the part I need before my house-guests start showing up for the weekend.

I drove over to ACE hardware, asked the guy there if he sold central AC unit relays, and he asked, "Is it Thirty or Forty amps?" He had a generic replacement for $35. I bought it, installed it, and life is good and cool inside my home.

Morals:
1- That knothead at RMI could have simply told me the relay was $66.75 and I'd have paid it and been on my way, happy as a lark with him and his company for so conveniently having the part, and I'd never have known the part was really much cheaper.

2- I now love the locally-owned ACE hardware and will always check with them first for anything I ever need.

3- I'd be willing to bet that the friend in Dallas wasted $1300 and only needed the same relay, but I haven't the heart to tell him my story.

I'll bet you guys all knew better.

If you didn't already,....you do now.

[Bruce Fenstermacher]

Well George to bad you didn't consult with me. I've replaced my outside relay 3 times and the first thing I'd suggest you look at. (Actually I could have but paid a friend of a friend to do the work) Mine usually burn the wires right off the relay it gets so hot and trouble shooting is pretty basic.

Through flying buddy friends who service air conditioner units I had a guy stop by last time it burn but couldn't find any actual burn wires. He suggested I install a heavier 35 amp unit to help with the burning up problem. He had both on his truck. $50 installed. He was passing by my place anyway.

[dacker]

For the longest time I had an HVAC company do the twice yearly checkups on my units (my present home has three), it cost two or three hundred a year. About a two years ago the company I had used for ten or twelve years went out of business shortly after the original owner died and I switched companies. After two of the checkup visits I had to call the company back for "unrelated problems" and wound up paying an extra four or five hundred dollars to get the problems fixed each time (these were units under thre years old). Most of that was technician troubleshooting hours. One visit was the result of wires "chaffing and shorting out in the unit". After a little exploration what I found was that the yahoos that were doing the checkups were inexperienced and were'nt putting the units back together properly... for instance snipping the tie wraps on bundles and then not tiew rapping them after they were finished (the source of the wires chaffing). They also replaced a valve on one unit that their equipment was showing to not be working properly, the funny thing was that the unit was cooling before but not after replacing the valve. Needless to say I fired them, got another company, and now only call when something is broken. So much for preventive maintenance!

This pissed me off so much that I almost went down to the local community college to sign up for HVAC classes. I figured it would be worth it in the long run to maintain three units!

David

[jon s blocker]

I had my outside unit quit about 1 month ago. It was 97 degrees out . My partner in my plane , Gordon, (George, you should remember Gordon), came over, took out his trusty elecrtrical tester, and said , it's the condenser. He went to his truck and got 2 smaller condensers, (the one that was bad was actually 2 in one). He hooked them up, Viola, AC. He sent me to the AC store on Monday, and I got the replacement condenser, $11.43 with tax. He's as smart as he says he is! I guarantee that was a $1500 dollar bill he saved me! Jon

[GAHorn]

I had my outside unit quit about 1 month ago. It was 97 degrees out . My partner in my plane , Gordon, (George, you should remember Gordon), came over, took out his trusty elecrtrical tester, and said , it's the condenser. He went to his truck and got 2 smaller condensers, (the one that was bad was actually 2 in one). He hooked them up, Viola, AC. He sent me to the AC store on Monday, and I got the replacement condenser, $11.43 with tax. He's as smart as he says he is! I guarantee that was a $1500 dollar bill he saved me! Jon

Yep, I've replaced my condenser-fan's start condenser previously. If the compressor is running but the fan is not.... it's either the fan motor, or more likely, the fan-motor's start condenser. (Looks like a large "can" with wires plugged into it.)
The first time it failed (about 5 years ago) I was out of town and Jamie had to call the AC service. I told her to tell them I suspected the fan start-condenser (or I'm sure they'd have tried to sell her an entire unit). They charged $80 for the service-call and $26 for the condenser. Two years ago it failed again, but I was home and went to the AC supply-house and bought a replacement for $16.

I'm told the reason they fail more frequently than in years-past is due to a change to more environmentally-friendly, non-PCB materials within them.

[170C]

I sure feel everyone's pain on the ac's.. Ours quit several yrs ago the day after I left for the convention, but a couple of days before Becky was to leave via the airline. Fortunately our next door neighbor is a hvac contractor and by putting us on his list ahead of some others, the ac was on that afternoon. I sometimes wonder how we got by without them when I was a kid, both the house & vehicles. Guess we didn't know any better and we sweated a lot, but so did everyone else. At least at home we did get a swamp cooler and in west TX they worked pretty well. Guess we have gotten soft, but if that is the case then just call me ole softie because I gotta have my AC Now if I could figure out how to put ac in the ole plane (no ice chest ones please).

[Robert Eilers]

I remember driving across Texas with a wet t-shirt stuck into the open window - worked better than nothing. Just had to re-wet it every half hour or so. We bought one of the ice chest coolers for the Sheriff's aircraft several years ago and found it was only good for about one and one half hours and could only decrease the cabin temp by about 10 degrees.

[hilltop170]

I feel your pain down there in Texas. We're having a heat wave in Alaska right now and Anchorage broke the record of 79°F for this date today at 80°F! I know y'all feel sorry for us sweltering up here.

What air conditioner? We don't have them in Alaska but the rest of the story is the temp will be back down to 60°-75°F before too long. We'll just have to suffer thru it until then.

[Bruce Fenstermacher]

Richard you must be feeling the effects of all the hot air from the media over your Governer resigning. Political talk probably generated most of the hot air in Texas as well.

[cessna170bdriver]

The car's OAT guage hit 104 as we passed through Ft. Worth last Friday. The only higher reading was descending into Needles, CA Sunday about sunset, at 105. You could feel the heat on the inside of the glass, and sticking a hand out the window felt like bathwater. It was nice to get back up on the mountan where the AC is still sitting idle.

Miles

[hilltop170]

Richard you must be feeling the effects of all the hot air from the media over your Governer resigning. Political talk probably generated most of the hot air in Texas as well.

Bruce-
You're a genius, I was wondering where all this hot smokey air was coming from! At first I thought it might have been global warming.

[flyguy]

The car's OAT guage hit 104 as we passed through Ft. Worth last Friday. Miles

Miles it is good that you weren't around Marble Falls on June 23! Just after we left the Flying X for home our OAT (on the Tahoe) read 106^. The tire pressures elevated about 10psi on that hot pavement. We drove towards Louisiana in those temps till we ran into a little rain shower near Crockett, TX. Just a 1/4 mile into that shower, the temp dropped down to 77^!!! It remained much the same till we got home. What a relief! It has been very hot though, here in western Louisiana, with only a little relief if the afternoon CUs sprinkle on us.

AC problems here too..... we are heading over to Jasper, TX this afternoon to pick up a "cap" for our unit. We may have to stop at the Golden Corral for a late dinner just to keep in practice!

[GAHorn]

Update on the central air repair specialist in Spicewood:

As is usually the case, ... I'm on a trip out of town....when Jamie advises me the air conditioning in the house is not working. Again. I gave her some simple circuit-breaker-checking tasks...and that wasn't it so she opened the windows and turned on the ceiling fans. I got home the next day.

The outside compressor unit was running just fine. This time it's the air-handler/evaporator/blower unit, which is mounted in the attic above our breezeway. The blower was not blower-ing.

Opened the furnace/air-handler unit and found a printed circuit-board had a spaghetti of wires connected to it, including the blower-motor leads. I disconnected them and "hot-wired" the medium-speed leads directly to 120-volts and the blower started right up. At least we had AC again, but the blower would run continuously until the actual fault was diagnosed and repaired.

The Air conditioning repair folks all wanted $120-$175 to come out to the country on a "service call" . (It's always curious to me why they call it a "service-call" ...when they always charge additional before they'll actually service anything.)

I figured that circuit-board must be the problem since it had several relays soldered onto it, and the electrical schematic of the installation instructions (Thank God I'm married to a woman who keeps documentation on every appliance she's ever bought) of the unit, which was purchased 15 -years ago, lead me to believe it had to be a failed relay on that board.

Carrier, the mfr'r...wouldn't give me the time of day ...insisting that I call one of their distributors who, unfortunately, are the same guys who wanted to charge me $50 to open up the day before July 4th when they were already open for business that day. Carrier "customer service" provided no "service" at all. ALL I wanted from them was the Part No. of that Circuit Board so I could order it from someone, but they steadfastly refused to provide it. They apparently wanted to support their distributor/installation network of dealers and cared nothing about "customer service".

A search online found a company that sells AC/Furnace replacement parts. As I surveyed their circuit boards I noticed they had some universal replacement parts and I studied the Part No's their parts "replaced". One of those PN listings matched some numbers printed upon the circuit-board in question in my attic....HK42FZ009... so I took a chance and ordered that board.

It cost me $130, plus $12 shipping, (less than some of the "service-call" charges).... and although I asked for 5-day delivery thinking I'd save a few bucks...they actually shipped it overnight! It came with detailed installation/replacement step-by-step instructions and a mating-harness to hook it up. Took about 20 mins.

Aaaahhhhhh. Cool air!



Here's a link to the actual PN, and if you go there, you can "back up" to their Home Page, in case
anyone else might find them helpful.

http://www.hvacpartsoutlet.com/furnacec ... cm282.aspx