Environment
2007-09-01 09:59:00
Air conditioning woes?...Yeah, I got ’em!
QUESTION: With my air conditioner, it’s one thing after another! I can’t seem to keep it running…and it’s hot outside…is there an inexpensive way to handle this on-going problem?
ANSWER: Inexpensive? The cost of repairs to an air conditioning unit can vary widely…almost as much as your level of discomfort when it’s 100 degrees outside and yours isn’t working right.
This can involve from something really simple that has gone wrong and is easy to fix, to the complete replacement of the unit and sometimes the undersized ducts, with equipment that can actually keep you cool in your house. The only way to find out about the costs required is to call someone who is in the business of air conditioning that can help you determine what it will cost to make the necessary repairs or replacements. The expense of maintaining your household equipment is generally far less than ignoring those little problems as they arise along the way, because they usually don’t just go away.
There have been people who have suffered in the heat for a long time, worried about the expense of calling someone, only to learn that their air conditioning unit was in need of a repair that cost less than a good meal at a really nice restaurant. That makes no sense at all to me.
The first thing you should consider doing is to attempt to learn what the physical condition of your unit is so that you can determine if it is able to be brought up to speed in an affordable manner. In other words, is it worth putting any more of your hard earned money into that particular unit, or not, considering its age and condition? Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t. A good AC Technician can check it out and give you the answer to the costs involved. The bottom line is, if it’s 100+ degrees outside, and your ac unit is letting you sweat inside, that’s not good. We can all agree on that. Now, let’s ask a couple of questions.
Is your air conditioner completely dead? Is the thermostat adjusted to the proper setting? Is the compressor motor running? Is it humming or making any kind of continuous noise or causing the lights to dim when it comes on? If it is making a continuous noise, and your air conditioner is still not cooling at all, there may be a problem with one or more of: the Compressor, the Condenser, the Blower, or the Evaporator.
Do we know for sure that we have power to the unit? If it’s running we do, but if it’s not coming on, we can check out the breaker in the box, the thermostat, the contactor, the transformer, and maybe even the wiring to see if it is burned.
Maybe the Circuit breaker trips when the unit comes on. That could be due to a weak breaker, a grounded compressor, the condenser fan motor shorted to ground, or any number of other problems.
Perhaps your blower motor in your furnace, which handles the air movement for the air conditioning, is running fine, and you’re getting some air movement through your registers, but it’s not as cold as it should be. You might just have an A-coil that is frozen up. This is usually caused by a lack of refrigerant in the system due to a chronic leak.
The reason that the A coil, located inside the furnace, forms ice is that when the system is short on refrigeration charge, part of the coil runs very cold and ice starts to grow. Once the ice starts to grow, it is in an insulator and keeps on growing until the coil and the refrigerant lines are one block of ice. If this happens, continuing to run the equipment will damage the compressor and not provide any cooling. Your AC Tech can solve all these problems for you so that you can get back to being cool on these hot dawg days of summer.
Let’s say that you’ve noticed that water is running down inside your furnace when the air conditioning is running, and spilling out around the floor of your furnace. This can mean something as simple as the condensation line from the A-coil being plugged up, and not allowing the condensation from the A-coil to escape down that line into the floor drain.
There are many, many things to check out to make sure they don’t grow into bigger problems down the line, and a regular springtime and fall checkup can keep your heating and air conditioning units running really well for many years to come. That’s money well spent! Ask anyone on a really hot day with an air conditioner that’s not working…more next month…
