It's been in the low 100's for the last several weeks. Today, my truck read 107*. So of course, my a/c in the house decided it was time to take a break from all the hard work.
I did all the normal stuff, checked and cleaned the coils outside, checked the filter inside, checked the lines for ice, etc. All seemed good, but no cold air, so I called the service a/c repair man, but he can't get here until hopefully Monday. So we called a friend that works for the local school district on their a/c's and he came over to see about charging the system. BTW...the fan is the only thing I've had running since I found out it wasn't working!
What he found was that the freon level looked good, the amps, looked good and I believe he said the head pressure looked good. So basically he said it didn't appear to be low on freon and the compressor still seems to be doing what it should be doing, except for some reason, it's not cooling. He went inside and looked to see what he could find and he thought the fan inside the house seemed very quiet, and it doesn't seem like it's running as strong as normal....but he also said if it wasn't pushing enough air, it should be freezing the system up.
We went back outside and then the breaker in the panel tripped. I tried reseting it, but it triped again, etc. He checked the fuses outside and they were good. At that point, he said he was out of ideas, unless the expansion valve was messed up, but he doesn't have enough experience to mess with that. So here we are.
Any suggestions??
I have had issues with the expansion valve when I bought the house and at that time the outside unit was only two years old, so they replaced the valve under warranty. It's now been about 2-3 years more, so the unit is now about 5years old. Would make sense, but curious what might cause that? Is there a way to bypass the valve somehow? It seems like the last time, the tech did something that essentially bypassed the valve and let the unit run and cool my house. I can't recall if he just took it outside the coil or what, but when he installed the new one, he just 'taped' it to the thicker copper line right before it enters the coil. It seems like he just had it hanging in the air outside everything until he could get it replaced. ????
When my friend when to unhook his gauges he was a bit shocked at how much oil & pressure seemed to be on/in the line on one side of the system. Sort of like the freon was sitting on one side of the system, but something was blocking it. Of course at this point, we couldn't test anything more as the breaker kept tripping and he thought the compressor probably was hitting some sort of overload circuit.
Any feedback would be appreciated. I'd love to be able to cool the house down a little until the tech can get here Monday....Thanks!
I did all the normal stuff, checked and cleaned the coils outside, checked the filter inside, checked the lines for ice, etc. All seemed good, but no cold air, so I called the service a/c repair man, but he can't get here until hopefully Monday. So we called a friend that works for the local school district on their a/c's and he came over to see about charging the system. BTW...the fan is the only thing I've had running since I found out it wasn't working!
What he found was that the freon level looked good, the amps, looked good and I believe he said the head pressure looked good. So basically he said it didn't appear to be low on freon and the compressor still seems to be doing what it should be doing, except for some reason, it's not cooling. He went inside and looked to see what he could find and he thought the fan inside the house seemed very quiet, and it doesn't seem like it's running as strong as normal....but he also said if it wasn't pushing enough air, it should be freezing the system up.
We went back outside and then the breaker in the panel tripped. I tried reseting it, but it triped again, etc. He checked the fuses outside and they were good. At that point, he said he was out of ideas, unless the expansion valve was messed up, but he doesn't have enough experience to mess with that. So here we are.
Any suggestions??
I have had issues with the expansion valve when I bought the house and at that time the outside unit was only two years old, so they replaced the valve under warranty. It's now been about 2-3 years more, so the unit is now about 5years old. Would make sense, but curious what might cause that? Is there a way to bypass the valve somehow? It seems like the last time, the tech did something that essentially bypassed the valve and let the unit run and cool my house. I can't recall if he just took it outside the coil or what, but when he installed the new one, he just 'taped' it to the thicker copper line right before it enters the coil. It seems like he just had it hanging in the air outside everything until he could get it replaced. ????
When my friend when to unhook his gauges he was a bit shocked at how much oil & pressure seemed to be on/in the line on one side of the system. Sort of like the freon was sitting on one side of the system, but something was blocking it. Of course at this point, we couldn't test anything more as the breaker kept tripping and he thought the compressor probably was hitting some sort of overload circuit.
Any feedback would be appreciated. I'd love to be able to cool the house down a little until the tech can get here Monday....Thanks!