Update: Ac Went Out At Home - Dead Lizard The Cause?

[toyotafan]

Large Capacitors fried. Got replaced and external fan works, might need a new compressor?

Edit, service tech is the son of a family friend who's learning the business of hvac and he didn't put a large enough capacitor on to start the compressor up. Came back out and fixed.

Before we called him we called a referred hvac tech who said 700, but maybe not fixable so just scrap the system and go 5000 for new unit.

We got it fixed for 300.

 

[toyotafan]

Wife threw everything out, Was going to try to get pictures of everything that melted. Not a big-deal though, here's a picture of what it looked like after it melted down. Basically the big capacitor exploded caught fire and melted everything. Glad its a metal case.

 

[toyotafan]

Ended up getting a 8000 btu widow unit on sale at frys that's hanging out of the bedroom window now and a buddy loaned me his 5000 unit and put that in another window and we were able to keep under 90 during the day and 80 in the bedroom.

At night we all slept in one room, i slept on the couch under the window unit one night.

So hotel room one night, new widow unit and repairs put this maybe at $700 total ... still shaking my head that the first service tech strongly recommended replacing at a cost of $5k.

 

[toyotafan]

Think i figured it out.

Part of this scenario in which the are conditioning went out includes the fact that there have been some anomalies with the electrical panel in the garage. Specifically the AC Tech turn power off and yet it still produce some type of a shock there was a little bit of power going through even though the circuit-breaker was turned off. I didn't see it but 2 people said that they saw it turned off. That being said I figured maybe is to a blown circuit-breaker that went bad let me go ahead and replace it, and when I pulled it off directly behind it was a dead fried lizard. Watch the video.

 

[tibadoe]

.......................Specifically the AC Tech turn power off and yet it still produce some type of a shock there was a little bit of power going through even though the circuit-breaker was turned off. I didn't see it but 2 people said that they saw it turned off...........

That's not good. I'm no electrician by any means but I did install the generator panel box, breakers, and patch cable for my portable generator. I remember him saying to make sure everything was grounded correctly. That way is something went wrong on either end it would send the current to ground and not through you. Who knows, may be worth checking.

 

[toyotafan]

That's not good. I'm no electrician by any means but I did install the generator panel box, breakers, and patch cable for my portable generator. I remember him saying to make sure everything was grounded correctly. That way is something went wrong on either end it would send the current to ground and not through you. Who knows, may be worth checking.

If you look in the video on the far left side you can see all of the grounds those are going into the back-yard directly behind that Box to a massive spike in the ground everything's grounded properly. When you have something like this it throws the entire schematic off in terms of the way everything is supposed to function. For example one very very very early web-server that I was on for this website had a fire on the switch between battery backup power and live AC power had the fire been 1 is to the left or when is to the right or 1" down-the-line no problem at all-but because the switch fried it couldn't run AC or battery backup. The system wasn't designed for that and it took 72 hours to get switch install, this was maybe the year 2005? 2006 very early? I don't know but there are things that can happen that just aren't part of the regular protocol for figuring stuff, and having a lizard touch at that point I don't know it seems like that's not supposed to happen and we've been having weird electrical anomalies in the house. I tested the ground fault after I replaced the big 60 trip circuit-breaker and I kept the 15 amp on and it's working properly again come I ended up getting the wrong type of circuit-breaker so I could install it anyway but they were the 1 that is on there any signs of any problem Now that dead lizard is gone

My brother says we should call him Sparky.

 

[tbplus10]

My a/c went out last night, woke up to 80 deg in the house at 6am.
I still have my new homeowners warranty so a quick call to them got a repair tech scheduled to come out. But they won't be here until Wednesday.
Luckily Wallyworld had 5000 btu window units on sale for $65.
Installed 3 off them temporary.

 

[toyotafan]

My a/c went out last night, woke up to 80 deg in the house at 6am.
I still have my new homeowners warranty so a quick call to them got a repair tech scheduled to come out. But they won't be here until Wednesday.
Luckily Wallyworld had 5000 btu window units on sale for $65.
Installed 3 off them temporary.

At least it's cool this week. Sucks that it went out though.

 

[tbplus10]

Suddenly the weathers not as cool as previously forcast, oh well the window units are keeping the temps down for now.

 

[toyotafan]

The downside of home warranties are that you have to deal with waiting to get work done. Had to experience that with my mother-in-law, guy came out and said there was no problem and was in and out. I had to call back and they were going to charge another $75 service call fee ... but they realized that her AC chiller was out and needed to be replaced. Took a week or more.

 

[tbplus10]

I've never had a problem waiting for ours to make decisions. They always approve repairs and get the tech started the same day.
They were calling the present assigned repair contractor by 10am Monday because he hadn't talked to us yet.

 

[tbplus10]

New capacitor and a 1/2 lb of Freon, and all is good again.
The tech couldn't get here until Wednesday, but we had window units keeping things cooled down.
Our warranty company allows us to call out of their network if the repair techs can't be there within 24hrs. The only issue is instead of a $75 service call fee we would have a$100 service call fee.

 

[toyotafan]

Glad it was something easy to fix, especially with a crazy day in dfw like today. 97 degrees and 50% humidity at one point when i looked.

 

[tbplus10]

Yea, made me happy.
Storms rolling in now, the temp is lower but you still need a/c to combat the humidity.

 

[toyotafan]

It's not this thread but on another i had posted i bought 3 window units which were cheaper than hotel room for 6 for 2 days. (Maybe it was this one)

Another benefit is that we were able to just loan them out to a friend who needed a couple of ACs when their unit went out. Bonus