"Pros"
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Joined: Feb 2008
Posts: 6,465
Well I've got a good one to wrap this thread up.
Back when we bought our current house a few years ago, the sellers added a home warranty as part of the package (I'm not a warranty kind of person, but if it's free to me then I won't complain). Ran into an issue where the AC stopped cooling shortly after buying , so we called the warranty place to fix it. The place they sent did a fan motor + hard start cap kit.
Fast forward to this week - suddenly starts cooling very slowly followed by not turning on at all a few hours later. I screw around with it for a few hours in the middle of the night, but can't get it to restart, (I don't have house hvac gauges, so my diagnostics were limited to electrical which checked out ok). Call a place out and they find 0 pressure and quickly ID the problem:
The previous tech that installed the hard start cap put it in the condenser cavity instead of in the electrical box with the other circuit boards and main cap (I get you want it as close to the motor as possible, but the electrical box is literally 12" away). I presume he secured it somehow at the time, but no sign of it now. At some point it had fallen and lodged itself between the output line and compressor body (which is almost impossible to see as its at the bottom center of a ~48" tall condenser sitting on 4" of spacer / isolation blocks up on the roof).
Over time, the rectangular metal cap body ate its way into the compartively soft line from compressor vibration which ultimately resulted in a pinhole that dumped all of the refrigerant over the course of half a day. Best part is it's R22.
This place wanted $5k to fix the line and refill. Called around a few more places for a fill only of weight specified by our unit and couldn't find it cheaper than ~$3500.
As this unit is clearly older given the R22, we went ahead and just bought a whole new system (its one of those all in one units with the air handler built in that sits on the roof top). Just frustrating that someone's poor quality work caused premature failure of an otherwise good running unit (especially right in the middle of summer...).
Back when we bought our current house a few years ago, the sellers added a home warranty as part of the package (I'm not a warranty kind of person, but if it's free to me then I won't complain). Ran into an issue where the AC stopped cooling shortly after buying , so we called the warranty place to fix it. The place they sent did a fan motor + hard start cap kit.
Fast forward to this week - suddenly starts cooling very slowly followed by not turning on at all a few hours later. I screw around with it for a few hours in the middle of the night, but can't get it to restart, (I don't have house hvac gauges, so my diagnostics were limited to electrical which checked out ok). Call a place out and they find 0 pressure and quickly ID the problem:
The previous tech that installed the hard start cap put it in the condenser cavity instead of in the electrical box with the other circuit boards and main cap (I get you want it as close to the motor as possible, but the electrical box is literally 12" away). I presume he secured it somehow at the time, but no sign of it now. At some point it had fallen and lodged itself between the output line and compressor body (which is almost impossible to see as its at the bottom center of a ~48" tall condenser sitting on 4" of spacer / isolation blocks up on the roof).
Over time, the rectangular metal cap body ate its way into the compartively soft line from compressor vibration which ultimately resulted in a pinhole that dumped all of the refrigerant over the course of half a day. Best part is it's R22.
This place wanted $5k to fix the line and refill. Called around a few more places for a fill only of weight specified by our unit and couldn't find it cheaper than ~$3500.
As this unit is clearly older given the R22, we went ahead and just bought a whole new system (its one of those all in one units with the air handler built in that sits on the roof top). Just frustrating that someone's poor quality work caused premature failure of an otherwise good running unit (especially right in the middle of summer...).
Last edited by bumpin96monte; Jul 31, 2024 at 04:37 PM.
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