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What's the HVAC thread's opinion of duct sealing chemicals (Aeroseal, etc.)? Do they work? And are they safe? Trying to salvage some efficiency without removing a substantial portion of my first floor ceiling and sealing properly.
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Sep 5, 2019 04:10
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Q for you all who do work in HVAC ductless. For line sets, should my contractor be using line sets specifically provided by the manufacturer or is it safe to go to the large supply store in this area and grab generic line sets from them to save on cost? I am aware of needing to ensure the diameter of the two copper lines match. I'm also aware of specifications regarding the maximum allowable length of lines.
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Sep 5, 2019 23:55
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ntan1 posted:Q for you all who do work in HVAC ductless. As long as he's good with the flaring tool or has weld-on flare starters using generic copper is fine. Just make sure they insulate both lines.
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Sep 6, 2019 02:47
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They must be the right size. Mitsu specs a specific size for specific outdoor/indoor combinations for a reason.
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Sep 6, 2019 03:14
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Does the outdoor unit usually have some kind of thermal limit switch? Mine won't turn on and kinda buzzes/hums for a few seconds at a time and then stops for a few. I cut the power and felt the fan motor and compressor, both were hot but not hot enough to be painful to touch. I haven't had any prior trouble with it but today was 104 outside, so I'm hoping it just cut off from getting too hot. Thermostat has been set to 75 all summer
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Sep 8, 2019 04:18
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brand engager posted:Does the outdoor unit usually have some kind of thermal limit switch? Mine won't turn on and kinda buzzes/hums for a few seconds at a time and then stops for a few. I cut the power and felt the fan motor and compressor, both were hot but not hot enough to be painful to touch. I haven't had any prior trouble with it but today was 104 outside, so I'm hoping it just cut off from getting too hot. Thermostat has been set to 75 all summer Sounds like time for a new start/run capacitor.
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Sep 8, 2019 05:26
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Doesn't look like any electric supply stores here are open on Sundays. Stuck relying on a window AC unit until tomorrow 
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Sep 8, 2019 15:19
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It's running 
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Sep 9, 2019 16:11
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brand engager posted:It's running Well you'd better hurry up and catch it then. ( )
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Sep 9, 2019 16:17
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brand engager posted:It's running Love that feeling. It's even more intense (though bittersweet) when you've had to wait out 3 days of excruciating heat because the only shops with condenser fan motors in the area will only sell to licensed HVAC folks, because reasons (unions, no doubt), and even though you paid for overnight shipping you discovered the problem too late on a Friday and gently caress you if you think our warehouse is doing anything on a weekend you rear end in a top hat  Anyways,
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Sep 9, 2019 17:24
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brand engager posted:It's running Root cause? ( )
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Sep 9, 2019 19:34
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Just that cap, afaik. When I removed it neither of my multimeters could show capacitance between any of the terminals.
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Sep 9, 2019 20:16
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TheBananaKing posted:will only sell to licensed HVAC folks, because reasons (unions, no doubt), hahahaha no. They won't sell to you because you're just there for a  jellybean part to fix your home unit. You don't generate enough gross sales to be worth dealing with.If you have any sort of business, own any sort of property, even a bullshit LLC you signed in your garage, you can sign up a commercial account with your local distributor and buy whatever you want. They may want to see an EPA 608 cert to sell you refrigerant, but those are easier to get than a HAM license. the sign "Commercial Sales Only" is actually just an excuse to keep the lovely DIY idiots out. If you're not an idiot, there are ways around it. There are two rules with commercial distributors: 1: The more you buy, the better they treat you. 2: If you have complaints, you had better have SOLID evidence to back them up, otherwise they will tell you to pound sand. "The customer is always right" does not apply in commercial land. PS: they will do things on the weekend, you just have to call the secret number and pay them an opening fee for their oncall person to come in on the weekend and open up for you.
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Sep 9, 2019 23:58
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Buying enough stuff from them and not asking stupid questions and acting like you belong there go a long way. I'm not licensed and my local HVAC distributor has sold me around 2k in materials now, up to and including hundreds of dollars worth of custom sized ducting I couldn't produce myself because of the small sheet metal brake I have. Know the industry terms, know what you need, don't waste their time, show up with an organized detailed parts list and pay without complaint and they'll have no issues with you. Unless it's a silly thing like a capacitor you can get on Amazon prime.
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Sep 10, 2019 00:29
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I was going to write a list of "how to deal with the counter sales people" but kastein just wrote it for me. If you follow his advice you should have no problems. Unless you get a cranky rear end in a top hat at that counter who just doesn't like you. Nothing you can do. Find another guy, or another distributor. I work for an HVAC contractor that buys several million dollars worth of stuff from distributors a year, and there are several counters in my area I only go to as a last resort.
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Sep 10, 2019 00:43
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Only place within spitting distance of me is a Ferguson Supply and at this particular shop, at least, they won't even talk to me without an account number. I was joking about the unions thing, but it's loving lovely that I can't go out and buy the exact part that I can see in their inventory online without being a registered LLC, or whatever I would need to do.
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Sep 10, 2019 01:10
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TheBananaKing posted:Only place within spitting distance of me is a Ferguson Supply and at this particular shop, at least, they won't even talk to me without an account number. I was joking about the unions thing, but it's loving lovely that I can't go out and buy the exact part that I can see in their inventory online without being a registered LLC, or whatever I would need to do. Sometimes this is due to a tax certificate thing. They do not collect sales tax for anyone and you being the end user breaks that so they refuse. It's not personal.
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Sep 10, 2019 01:17
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Ferguson? They are really strict about no private sales. They are also poo poo where I am, even as a contractor. Their main focus is plumbing anyway. Go somewhere else. You can also get hvac poo poo from places like Grainger or Fastenal. The prices will be just as terrible as any other.
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Sep 10, 2019 01:21
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That must be a local thing, I used to use Ferguson exclusively cause they were the coolest and had free coffee. (Edit - they closed this location several years ago tho) Anyhow I've not had any issues with commercial counter sales, but there's a million fly by night HVAC guys here and I suppose dealing with individual sales has to be a good chunk of business.
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Sep 10, 2019 01:22
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MRC48B posted:Ferguson? They are really strict about no private sales. They are also poo poo where I am, even as a contractor. Their main focus is plumbing anyway. Go somewhere else. Thanks, I'll have to try Fastenal next time I need something. I had just assumed they would be just as forthcoming as Ferguson, but I'm embarrassed to admit I never even tried. Only needed the fan motor since I've been living here. I heard Grainger started selling to the masses but they are about an hour from me last I checked.
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Sep 10, 2019 03:09
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Johnstone is usually pretty lax about who they sell to. I've seen plenty of non-trades people shopping there. Or if you have any local supply houses they can be good too.
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Sep 10, 2019 04:18
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Oh another thing. Not sure if this helped since it's just what I have to wear to work these days and I go on my way to work, but showing up in mildly grubby but not torn jeans, steel toes, and a blue or black button down tshirt or polo with a generic company logo on it doesn't hurt 
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Sep 10, 2019 13:58
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I'm looking at a house with multizone forced hot water. I'm coming from always having lived in single zone FHA. Are there any options for smart thermostats that isn't literally just "spend a bunch of money to buy one for each zone"?
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Sep 14, 2019 01:46
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what exact features do you need from your "smart" thermostat? Honeywell makes a multi-zone system. I've never used it so thats all i know.
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Sep 14, 2019 02:03
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I liked the Ecobee I had previously. Remote access is good. It informed me of several equipment failures over a few years. Also having to manage four thermostats scattered around the house would be a pain. I was hoping for one central device with a phone interface and just remote sensors matched to zones. It's not a huge technical challenge to do, so I guess I'm surprised there's not a widespread solution. I did see the Honeywell device but the webpage I was reading was light on technical details.
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Sep 14, 2019 02:13
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HVAC adjacent: are digital oil tank meters something that can reasonably self installed or do I need to have an oil company install it?
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Sep 16, 2019 15:48
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Mr. Powers posted:HVAC adjacent: are digital oil tank meters something that can reasonably self installed or do I need to have an oil company install it? Are you talking about the kind that replaces the tank floater? If so, they're pretty easy - you just need a pipe wrench. But I'm curious as to which one you're going with. The only ones I've found are "cloud based" and from small companies that I don't trust to remain in business, which means your $300 gauge becomes entirely useless.
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Sep 16, 2019 16:25
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I hadn't done that much planning yet. I figure if I get a digital read out, then there's a hope of hooking it up to an ESP8266 for DIY reading. This isn't something I really want cloud connectivity for like the thermostats, but it would be nice to have readout access and monitoring within the home.
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Sep 16, 2019 17:23
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Holy crap are these expensive, even the cheapest one I could find was $90. For alot less you could just setup an old RPi with a webcam. Have it email you 1/day, or get fancy and setup motion detection to only trigger on the bottom third of the gauge.
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Sep 16, 2019 18:03
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Sorry for the possibly long winded incoming post. Transferring from the quick questions thread. I have a house built in 1985 and, as far as I can tell, an exterior compressor unit that is no older than 2007. I'm using a Nest Gen 2 thermostat. No external sensors for it. Last year the capacitor went out. Got it replaced and all was well. Two months ago I had a $300 electricity bill. Expensive, but we just had a kid and my wife was staying home and it was the middle of summer in Mississippi. I just figured we used more. Well this past month we had another bill the same price. And just about the time (like literally within a minute or two) that I checked it, my wife noticed that the AC didn't seem to be working well. It was about 77 in the house and 95 outside. The next day I do what I can. Shut off the power (there's an interior breaker and the exterior disconnect... gonna get to this in a minute) and inspect the parts as well as I can and clean the mess out of it. Remove the fan, get the debris out, lightly hose it, etc. When I go to turn the power back on... nothing. Eventually I find that although I turned the rusty wobbly exterior breaker back to on, I had to give it a nice extra push to fully connect (complete with "scare the poo poo out of me" sparks). Still nothing. The next morning (today) I call the repair man and he comes out to take a look. He uses his pressure gauges to check the refrigerant. It's actually reading a bit high. He checks the capacitor, it's hot as hell so he figures thats it, but it reads fine. 55/5. He does a cursory check over everything (insulated pipe was "beer can cold") and goes to turn the power back on. At this point the exterior switch (a traditional style breaker switch... not the pull-a-part disconnects I see on the YouTubes) won't go back into "on." It just stays eternally tripped. He starts to look in the box (which is a rusted web filled carcass) and is pretty appalled. The switch is crumbly, clearly burnt in spots and there's evidence of some burn in the box. Where the white wire goes to the "post" is actually kinda burnt about a length of 1 inch from the post down. Then he noticed the black wire is actually wired to bypass the post and it just goes straight from the inside of the house and to the compressor unit. He takes the switch out which just sort of crumbles. It's too late to fix the box so he's going to come in the morning to completely replace the whole disconnect. In the meantime he hardwires the outside since we have a breaker on the inside. We're hoping that's what it was and that it would be a stopgap for the evening. However the air is STILL not blowing cold and it's even less cool than it was the previous two nights. The inside temp hovers around 80 until the outside ambient finally his 80 and below. So for the most part the refrigerant pressure, capacitor and compressor all seem fine and functional and we're still not getting cold air. I know he'll be back in the morning but what are the next things that could be the problem? I'll have a pic of the disconnect box in the morning, but here's the switch that came out of it.   sd
BonoMan fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Sep 17, 2019 |
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Sep 17, 2019 05:34
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If everything outside seems in working order, the issue is somewhere inside. The inside coil and filter are clean? Fan working properly? Coil isn’t icing up? Ducts all connected properly?
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Sep 17, 2019 07:04
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Alright! So ... update. We're moving in the right direction. Here's the interior of the old breaker box for shits and giggles. You can see where he hardwired it and you can see on the upper left where the post is gone because it wasn't even connected to anything. You can see the white cable, clipped, still attached to the post (and how it looks burned from the head down a bit.  AC guy gets there and we head up to the attic to check the coils up there and sure enough he thinks they're frozen. It's a slab coil system so hard to outright tell but there's a little ice on the outside and the pipe leading in was really cold. Too cold apparently. "Should just be beer can cold" he says. We talk about it and basically he thinks the compressor wasn't even on when he came yesterday. Just the fan. He thinks the electrical had gotten so bad (when he measured yesterday it was not getting the voltage it should have been) that the compressor was probably not getting the power it should have... or none at all... and froze up the system while we were out on vacation. We turned the heat on to dethaw it (thanks Nest for NOT allowing us to run the fan just by itself anymore. It must be cooling or heating). Installed the nice and shiny new disconnect system and now I'm about to turn it on and see if the house starts to cool.
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Sep 17, 2019 19:02
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He "thinks" the compressor wasn't on? And he had gauges on it?
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Sep 17, 2019 19:13
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angryrobots posted:He "thinks" the compressor wasn't on? And he had gauges on it? Yeah, the combination of thinking it's over-charged, electrocuting himself, using "beer can cold" as a diagnostic tool instead of an actual thermometer/thermocouple and now not knowing if the coil is frozen or not (again, there is a well known temperature at which water freezes - it's not a mystery).......are you sure this is an actual AC guy or it is just some handyman?
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Sep 17, 2019 20:04
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"This line is cold." "Too cold."
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Sep 17, 2019 22:42
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Oh lord I'm jumbling a lot of that up. The comment about thinking the compressor wasn't on was about when he first walked up, and the guy that almost electrocuted himself was a different guy a year ago. Also for the slab coil, since he couldn't see it directly, he just took the ice and super cold insulation pipe as it was frozen. Nevertheless I don't think he was their A man and his boss came out to help out. We got everything thawed out and it's working better but man the compressor is really having a hard time. Chugging, overheating and cutting off. Essentially we're in "working but no guarantees" land. The internal unit is from 1985 and is really struggling. The outdoor compressor is from 2007. So we've just decided to go ahead and replace the whole thing tomorrow. $5500 with a refund for everything done the past day. The boss guy did some more electrical tests on the compressor and said it was pulling way too much amperage and that's likely what caused that lovely rigged breaker to finally fry. And from there it went downhill. When the compressor was cutting off, he put his gauge on there and he said the head pressure was really high. It'd get near 500 and then the whole thing would shut off. He hosed it down to get it to cool off and it's kinda worked for a bit (that's where we are now).
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Sep 17, 2019 23:56
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I think you have multiple issues going on at the same time, and we're not going to be able to diagnose them via forums post.
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Sep 18, 2019 00:48
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MRC48B posted:I think you have multiple issues going on at the same time, and we're not going to be able to diagnose them via forums post. Oh I wasn't expecting it to be solved here. As I'm said I'm getting a new HVAC tomorrow. These last two posts were just chronicling the situation.
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Sep 18, 2019 01:27
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I did not mean offense with that, I was trying to say that replacement was probably the right path.
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Sep 18, 2019 01:37
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| # ? May 18, 2024 07:38 |
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I have a crazy idea and I guess this is the best place to ask because it's AC related. So my garage gets pretty hot and I'd like to put an AC unit there. Not a portable one because they suck, but a window AC unit. I can also get one for free. Only problem is there's not really a good spot to cut a hole and put in a window unit. There's no gables, and it's mostly brick on all sides. So I'm down to pretty much cutting a hole in the rear, backyard facing door and sticking it in there. That has the downside of making it really awkward to use the door because of the layout of the garage door in relation to the house. Also having that weight on the door probably isn't a great idea long term. OR I could build a box to mount the window AC unit in, and then have a duct pull in outside air and then another duct exhaust the air outside, with a fan in one of the ducts to force the air movement. I could drill holes and run some flex duct to the door and that would solve my layout issue since there wouldn't be a huge condenser sticking out the back of the door. Anyone see a reason why that wouldn't work?
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Sep 18, 2019 03:29
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