I live in South Fucking Carolina, and it’s July, and the air’s busted.
The hilarious part is, the garage has an upstairs apartment, and a seperate HVAC… and it’s busted, too. They’re coming… sometime.
I do have a home warranty that covers the air, but it takes forever to get those guys out, so I was hoping there was something simple I could do on this count. The air comes on with the fan and all and stays on for less than a minute, and then cuts off. This morning I noticed it and cut it off for the day thinking it was frozen up or something, but when I got home at 9 tonight and cut it back on it refuses to cool the house down. When it does cut on (I’ve been doing other stuff but it turns on when I monkey with the settings) I don’t feel cold air before it stops, but it stops pretty fast. Like I said, under a minute.
Should I call the home warranty people, or is there something to try? Please, guys, I’m sweating like a hog up in here and I keep shooing the cats away because they’re too warm. I can’t open the windows and wouldn’t if I could in this neighborhood.
When you say it stops - how is it stopping?
Is the outside unit (the compressor) shutting off after a minute? Or is the whole system stopping as if you turned it off at the thermostat?
If the outside unit shuts off, but the fan keeps running, does the outside unit ever re-start on its own? Or, is it tripping a circuit breaker? (I’m assuming you’d have mentioned that, if that was the case.)
My hunch is that a thermal cutoff is tripping in the compressor - it’s getting too hot, and once it cools off, it can restart. A tripped breaker would stay tripped.
Regardless of what’s causing the thing to shut down, there’s not much a homeowner can do other than changing the furnace air filter periodically and making sure the compressor’s not buried in debris such as branches, weeds or leaves. Other than that, call the repair people and hope they can get out to you before the cats burst into flames.
If two totally separete units are both behaving in the same way at the same time, I wonder if it’s enviromental. As gotpasswords mentioned, go take a look at the outside units and make sure that air can easily move over then coils. If not, clear away the debris and/or hose off the coils to clear them off any dirt/dust/crap from a cottonwood tree etc…
Also, it’s important to know what exactly is hapening to make it shut down. That is, does the inside unit turn off then the outside unit, or does the outside unit turn off and the inside fan keeps running.
Funny you should say that. The central air in my apartment building stopped working today for reasons unknown. First time in the 9 years that I’ve been here. Fortunately it wasn’t a sweltering day here like it was yesterday, so we weren’t that badly off – but they’d better get that fixed toute de suite, 'cos if that lasts more than a day or two, there will be blood.
They’re not screwed up in the same way - the one in the garage doesn’t do anything at all. The house unit turns on on the outside and then turns off. (The first time I turned it on at the thermostat this morning it stayed on more like five minutes, but nothing came out of the vents and it soon stopped.) There hasn’t been any air coming out of the vents, hot or cold.
It’s not a breaker. (Obviously - if it were it wouldn’t keep coming on.) If I don’t turn it off at the thermostat it will keep “trying” every couple of minutes. I’ll go out and take a look at the debris status.
For some reason the blower motor inside your furnace isn’t turning on. Since the freon comes back ‘unused’ so to speak, the compressor shuts down. Once the freon gives off it’s cold on it’s own and turns back into gas, the compressor starts back up. It’s called short-cycling.
So…how handy do you feel? The next step would be to see if the blower motor is getting power. To do that you’ll need to pop the cover off the furnace, find the two wires that go to the blower motor and connect them to a testing unit, then push the door switch down with your hand (it’s a button that makes sure the cover is on the furnace) and have someone turn the AC on (turn the temprature on the thermostat down). The testing unit should show that there is power. Assuming it does, you need a new blower (assuming the wires were connected to the blower motor well to begin with, I suppose it could be a loose connection). If it doesn’t you need to keep looking. My money is on needing a new blower. At that point, you can call someone OR you can take the motor out yourself and replace it.
And of course if you don’t feel comfortable doing this yourself, by all means call someone in to do it for you.
ETA, I could be wrong. I’m basing all this on you mentioning that there isn’t any airflow from the vents whatsoever at any time. BTW, can you ever even hear the inside unit start up?
I put the repair request in, but it’ll probably take forever just to even get the call back. I’m decamping with the dog, leaving the house to the cats, and moving in with Mom and Dad for the duration.
I’m not even sure where the inside unit is (by the filter?) or what it does. I can’t hear anything blowing, if that’s what you’re asking.
I’m technically handy enough to try testing the blower, but I don’t have anybody around to give me a hand with it, so I’ll just suck up some free air at the folks’. I’m sure they have something wrong with their computer that I’ll need to fix.
I don’t know why it is, but plumbers are always rude and surly, appliance repair people are always vulgar and friendly, and heating and air guys are always the nicest people.
It is the motor. It’s an unusual motor. They won’t have the part until at least Monday. He yanked it out and took it with him - made it look so easy! So that’s another year my home warranty has paid for itself. (Also this year - free new water heater.)
I see you have your answer, but to elaborate… A VERY VERY VERY over simpifed explanation of what happens is this.
Compressor sends cold freon (I know, but this is easier to explain) to the furnace. Furnace fan kicks on and blows the cold from the freon into the house. The now warm freon travels back out to the compressor to become cold again. If the freon gets out to the compressor still cold, you have a problem. One way for this to happen is that for some reason air isn’t flowing over the coils in the furnace. That was your issue. Like I said before, should be an easy fix.
BTW, it’s better you found out now. If your motor didn’t work come winter, you wouldn’t have had heat.
In this part of the country, it’s a lot better to have no heat than to have no air. It’s not even very hot today and it’s still pretty miserable, especially since I can’t open the windows.
He said the unit’s about 20 years old, and if it had been the compressor my warranty would have covered a replacement of the whole unit. It’s about time to renew or not renew the warranty, and essentially everything’s been replaced but the heat/ac. If they do replace it, I’m sure it will be the crappiest kind of unit. Is there a big difference between what they’d give me and what I’d get for myself? How much would a new unit cost out of pocket? (Single story dwelling, about 1800 sq ft.) What are the quality differences in units?
An off the cuff guess is that you’d need a 3.5 or 4 ton unit. The actual sizing will need to take into consideration things like the amount of insulation in your home, solar gains through things like west-facing windows, and so on.
According to my housemate that installs and services these things, Carrier is the brand to get - there may be better ones but they cost significantly more, and there are a lot of worse ones. He installs a lot of Carrier, but does not repair a lot of Carrier.
The other number to watch for is the SEER, a measure of its energy efficiency - higher is better, and your local power utility may offer rebates or other credits for installing a high-SEER system.
After the tonnage and SEER, about the only other consideration is noise - better units will be quieter.
Cost will depend on quite a few things, like if you want to replace the furnace and/or air handler at the same time, and if there are any things unique to your needs. Again, just a rough number is to expect somewhere around $6,000.
As for what you’d get from the home warranty people vs what you’d buy for yourself, you’d have to ask them. You might be able to get them to buy you out, so to speak. When our water heater went from ‘merely old’ to ‘expect it to die within the month’ the warranty company sent us $400 that we put towards installing a better grade of heater on our own, rather than the small builder’s special that they were going to install.
