When I woke up this morning and the house was 28°C (82°F), I didn’t have a good feeling about it. The blower inside the house was running, but the heat exchanger thing outside was just making a buzzing noise but wasn’t running. Not a good sign.
After last year’s maintenance inspection, I was expecting that the unit had finally failed and was going to need to replace it. Today being a holiday, I wasn’t expecting to be able to get anybody out to check on it until Thursday or Friday, but when I called the company (Carolina Air Care) was able to send someone out this afternoon, much to my surprise. It took a while for them to get out here (busy day for them it seems), but once the technician got here it only took him one look to diagnose the problem: a blown capacitor on the heat exchanger. A quick replacement and the unit was up and running once again.
The repair wasn’t cheap, but it was a whole lot less expensive than what I was expecting. Hopefully this will keep things running a little while longer and give me a little more time to continue saving to replace the heat exchanger. I know I’m going to have to replace it soon. It would just be nice to have a little more saved up for it before replacing it.
When it starts cooling down, I’ll have them come out again for the annual maintenance inspection and see how much time I might have left on the unit. Hopefully I can get another year out of it before needing to replace it.
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It has been very hot lately. That is not uncommon. It probably overheated and shorted out. But, just to be safe, make sure the fan is spinning without resistance – such as a twig falling into the unit. The capacitor is supposed to cut off when the fan is nearly up to speed. If it never reaches full RPM, the capacitor won’t cut off. It will overheat regardless of the temps outside. (Disclaimer: This is coming from knowledge of radar units, not AC units, but a fan with a capacitor to kickstart it is a fan with a capacitor to kickstart it regardless of the end use.)