Thursday, August 19, 2021

The Night The Air Conditioning Conked Out

      That would be the night before last, passed with fans running everywhere we could run them.  It sounded like the compressor wasn't coming on.

      Yesterday morning, I called the HVAC service company we use (Butler M-K) and they promised to send someone by mid-afternoon.  That's fast for air-conditioning work during the summer in Indianapolis.

      The tech found a defunct motor run capacitor* in the condensing unit.  Yes, it's for the compressor.  And the part was under warranty, too!

      It took the rest of the afternoon and into the evening to get the house below 80°F, but the drop in humidity was rapid and made a huge difference.
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* I grew up being told they were there to do a little phase-shifting to get the AC motor started, and called them "starting capacitors."  HVAC guys usually call them "run capacitors," since they make the motor run.  I'm going with the terminology used by the person who fixed the thing.

8 comments:

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

Them caps. They haven't worked as well since they took the carcinogens out. What's next, take the asbestos out of the oven mitts? /AbeSimpson

Mike V said...

I was 12 before I lived in a house with air conditioning. Wouldn't willingly go back to those days.

RHT447 said...

Glad to hear you are once again cool.

We moved to the DFW area in 2015 and bought a house. The date on the HVAC was 1999. The following summer it quit on 100 degree day. Called up the home warranty company, and their preferred repair shop said they could be there in three days. Right.

So I hopped on YouTube and watched some videos. Learned about capacitors and watch a guy work on a system identical to ours. Went out and pulled the cover and found the capacitor. Aha! A wire was burned off. Simply cut back to fresh wire and crimped on a new lead. Got it up and running. I figured the capacitor wasn't long for this world, so got and installed a new one. That kept it going until we could replace the system.

Robert said...

The phrase "run capacitor" made my eye twitch. Call me old school.
Glad you got yer cooling back.
Gawd bless Mr. Carrier.

Cop Car said...

Happy that R-X and RHT447 are so great with capacitors. If it's not in an amplifier or tuner of some sort, capacitor would not occur to me. Duh

We get spoiled rather quickly. I was the first person in my immediate family to have an air-conditioned house (1968 - age 30). As I don't sweat enough to provide anything close to sufficient cooling and am subject to heat stroke, it was a marvelous event. In my current part of the world (Kansas), people treat air conditioning for us old people as a priority; so, I made sure to tell the scheduler that we have a basement and could survive - to treat our service call as "routine" - when our unit conked out several years ago. Our (replacement) HVAC, now, just hums along. Whew! (We were at 99 degrees and high humidity, yesterday - heat index 107.)

Roberta X said...

Cop Car: A lot of alternating-current motors have starter capacitors, especially if the motor needs to provide much torque.

I grew up without air-conditioning, and didn't have it in my home until I was in my early 30s. Childhood summer memories of trying to sleep (or sneak in reading) in the sweltering dark, with widows open and fans roaring in the hall still haunt me.

When I owned a two-story duplex on top of a hill, the washrooms were on the back of the second floor under a shed dormer with a nearly flat (and quite large) roof. On the worst summer nights, I would carry a cot, TV tray, extension cord, clock, phone (I was on call) and reading light up to the roof to sleep. Just step out the tall window and onto the roof, and a nice walk up to the flat section. Even on the hottest nights, there was a little breeze and a clear night could border on chilly under the stars even while the house was an oven. It wasn't exactly private, but it wasn't exactly not, either; I prefer a longer nightgown anyway, and kept a robe handy. A sudden rainstorm could cause a hasty retreat, but that only happened once or twice.

Roberta X said...

New Jovian Thunderbolt: Odd. The only difference I have noticed about non-PCB capacitors is that they're a little larger, especially early on. They work just as well and last at least as long.

Mike V said...

"On the worst summer nights, I would carry a cot, TV tray, extension cord, clock, phone (I was on call) and reading light up to the roof to sleep."

Many older (100 years or so) 2 story houses had screened in sleeping porches for the 2nd floor. When hot weather came, the beds were moved out onto the porch; and back inside when cool weather returned. I always thought it a great solution to the problem.