At about six this evening, while sitting at my computer, I noticed it was getting stuffy inside the house.
I went to my thermostat and saw that the temperature was a toasty 83 degrees F, although it’s set for 80 degrees. I could hear the a/c going great guns, however.
Going outside, I checked the outdoor unit: it appeared to be dead. Its fan wasn’t spinning and no noises were coming from it.
Back indoors I checked my breaker box; no breakers had tripped.
What’s going on?
Check your mindspring email.
Compressor died? Coolant leak? Both are possibilities and would not prevent the fan from running.
The external air exchanger usually features it’s own fuse, too. But remember if that’s blown, there’s a reason it blew. Usually that means a seized motor or other type of short someplace that will need to be corrected first.
Maybe it’s broken?
I got on the phone with KaiserWilly, my new best friend, and he took me through several troubleshooting steps which culminated in my air conditioner resuming operation!
I wouldn’t presume to have understood what we did, but it boiled down to “something about the contactor” and it was resolved by kicking the outside compressor.
Tomorrow I’m going to open the access panel and blow out the contactor for a more permanent solution.
Tonight: I’ve got cold air!
I paid a repair man to learn how to clean the filter in my a/c unit. Well, in deepest coldest NZ you don’t have a/c and it never occurred to me that the interesting fuzzy build-up on the a/c thingy was a problem. Just stopped working one day.
I’m glad you’ve got cold air. I wish I had warm air because it’s cold here.
I had that same problem in a house I used to live in. Ants would climb up inside the control box and prevent the contacts from, well, contacting. The outside unit would then fail to turn on. The remedy was really quite simple: TURN OFF THE BREAKER!! , remove the cover, use a bent coathanger to scrape the ant bodies out of the contact area, spray ant poison in areas away from the electrical stuff, replace the cover, restore power.
Something about electricity would attract the ants to their doom. I always wondered why they did that.