Tuesday, July 1, 2008

5 Common Air Conditioner problems

Here is some very basic hvac training for beginners


1. The A/C filter, check it to see if it is dirty, if the a/c filter is dirty then that means that no air is getting sucked into the air handler, which means your home is going to be hot as hell. My recommendation is to check the air filter once a month and more than likely you will need to replace it.

2. Dirty air handler coils, if you don’t use an air filter there is nothing to filter out all the dirt and dust that is sucked in through the air handler coils, eventually the coils will be clogged up with dirt and once clogged enough the refrigerant lines will freeze up and your home will be hot. Only way to do this is clean the coils!

3. The Breaker to the condensing unit or air handler is tripped, this could happen from a bare wire touching metal somewhere in the a/c system, power failure from a lightning storm etc. A trained electrician must find the ground if the breaker keeps tripping.

4. Float valve tripped(if applicable). The float switch is located on the air handler, it is designed to shut down the air conditioning system. What happens is that over time slime sludge builds up in the condensate line and eventually the condensation from the air handler will get backed up and push the lever on the float switch upwards causing the air conditioning system to shut down. To fix this all you have to do is clean out the condensate line.

5. The outside unit (condenser) is low on refrigerant. You can check this by hooking the correct a/c gages up to the high and low sides of the king valves, but you have to be HVAC certified to mess around with refrigerant, so if you are not HVAC certified then find someone who is!



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