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A cap and contactor are both cheap enough that I'd just shotgun them both but I live sun-adjacent so if my heat pump isn't working I don't have the luxury of diagnostic time. I'm also assuming you've let things sit around long enough to cool down? When I had a bad cap that caused the outside fan to not start, the compressor went into thermal shutdown due to the lack of airflow.
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Jun 21, 2021 04:30
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AZ here, I've never seen an air handler for a heat pump installed in a conditioned space. Most (including both houses I've owned) have the air handler in the attic and the outside unit mounted on the ground. My mom's house is the only oddball I've been up close and personal with, but even then one air handler is in the garage and the other is in an exterior-opening closet by itself.
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Jun 29, 2021 02:18
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MrChrome posted:My 22 year old AC system has kicked the bucket. It has a refrigerant leak. We've been having places come out to spec out a new system but they all have a 4-8 week lead time. It's a Unico system so I guess they're hard to get ahold of because there is only one manufacturer? I'm a bit confused here, is there a specific reason you're going with the same manufacturer that you have in place right now if you're replacing everything? Or is this the manufacturer your contractor uses and they're just backed up? Supplies are hosed everywhere right now so it may be less "your specific system has hard to find parts" and more "nothing is in stock anywhere". In your shoes, unless the cost to do so is astronomical I'd be looking at doing the repair on the 22-year-old system to just get it running now and schedule the full replacement as soon as all the parts are available.
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Jun 29, 2021 23:06
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BlackMK4 posted:Yeah, I figured as much with respect to throwing darts with no real info. Oh well, hopefully they show up today. Arizona has fortunately been spared normal summer heat over the last few days and if they have parts in stock this might not be too terrible. For what it's worth, the 18 SEER Goodman two stage I had installed at my old place last year did fail to start once during the winter. Installer came out and looked at it, turned it off and on again, and then it worked. Recommended a hard start kit but I never bothered putting one on. So apparently it's not entirely unheard of? I can't manage to find anything about it now but the way your thermostat is wired is the same mine was, where the two stage logic is handled entirely by the heat pump itself. It ramps up based on how long the heat / cool command is present.
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Jul 24, 2021 21:27
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BlackMK4 posted:Hey Was, sold the house a month ago. But I still have the paperwork from it and it listed off all of these:  I liked it a lot, I'm going to have them come out and do a 20 SEER at my new house because the heat pump here is almost as old as the one that blew up last summer. There was also absolutely no mistaking whether it was on low or high - the air handler was also two-stage and the return duct was too small for the amount of air it could pull. At high speed you could hear the air rushing through the filter through most of the house. But it only kicked into high if you set a new temperature that it had to work to get. Maintaining an existing set point never went above low.
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Jul 25, 2021 01:39
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Do you remember which model yours is? I'm curious to take a look at their wiring diagram for it.
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The loud as gently caress return is because it was undersized, 20x25 return for a 4 ton system. They mentioned it as a potential problem when they installed the new system but I was going to push that off until sometime this year (and ended up moving instead). I've been using Climate Pro. Not the cheapest by a long shot, but when the new unit last year was back ordered a few days, they came out and swapped my outside unit with a used-but-good one they'd pulled from another house, and bodged the gently caress out of the TXV until it all worked well enough to get the house cooled off again. Full disclosure, my wife is friends with the owner of the company so I don't know how much that factored into the emergency fix but from what I've gathered, going above and beyond to limp systems along until the new system is ready isn't unusual for them.
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Jul 25, 2021 03:44
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Xenix posted:When I tested the high voltage wires, I had 119/120 volts (the manual calls for 115 volts). However, when I tested the low voltage wires, I was getting 5 vdc. The manual calls for 12 vdc Worth noting: on the mains voltage portion, that sort of deviation is normal. The actual power delivered to your house should be 120V on a single phase like that, though depending on a bunch of factors it may be as low as 110V. Them calling out 115 is just aiming for the middle. On the low voltage side, if you're getting 5V and not 12V and you're sure you're probing the right terminals, then yeah that seems like a pretty clear failure.
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Jul 27, 2021 00:14
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DaveSauce posted:Also follow-up: what's a good open-to-the-public site to buy spare parts like contactors and caps from? I know one of the caps is going bad and the above company wants $210 for it (even when they're already here on a tune-up visit), and I'm perfectly capable of DIYing that. Outside of Amazon (i.e. if you don't follow skipdogg's advice to keep spares on hand and need to find a spare Now), your next best bet is going to be either a shop that specializes in appliance parts, or a hardware store that happens to carry them. I've never found them at a regular LowesDepot but one of my local Ace stores has a shelf full of caps and contactors. The appliance parts shop across town has pretty much everything, including fans.
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Oct 27, 2021 23:32
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DaveSauce posted:There don't seem to be too many appliance shops around... searches get lots of big box stores, and plenty of mobile repair services, but very few parts shops. This is the shop I use locally, and looks like they ship too: https://www.appliancepartscompany.com/product-category/hvac/capacitors
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Oct 28, 2021 15:53
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IOwnCalculus posted:I liked it a lot, I'm going to have them come out and do a 20 SEER at my new house because the heat pump here is almost as old as the one that blew up last summer. So this happened today. Ended up with an Amana variable-speed inverter system. Took a big-rear end check because new house needed a five ton unit, along with fixing design/build issues in the original setup. The original system only had a single return so a second one was added across the house. The bedrooms on the same side of the house as the air handler were fed off of a single duct, and the feed into the room we're using as a home office now was just a T-junction so most of the air was blasting right past it instead of into the office. So that got its own direct feed. At low speeds I'm pretty sure the loudest sound outside is the loving refrigerant. It's going to be a solid four or five months before it really gets pushed hard, but I've got a summer's worth of power usage data on the old ~11 SEER system to see how much of a difference this makes.
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Nov 4, 2021 05:54
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Motronic posted:During the heating season where it's got to be working every day? No. To pile onto this: the motor itself probably isn't set up to be serviceable in any normal way, with sealed non-greasable bearings that are pressed onto the shaft/into the case. Even as someone who has tools to be able to deal with some of that poo poo, my tactic when dealing with a trashed bearing in an HVAC motor is replace the whole motor. It's more expensive than replacing some cheap bearings, but less expensive than paying an HVAC guy to come out and replace the motor for you.
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Jan 22, 2022 19:57
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Plastic wire loom is definitely cheaper, but rodents can/do chew through that too. You can get spicy electrical tape, though.
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Jun 17, 2022 20:12
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Yooper posted:You could have a bad start capacitor, if that's the case you may be able to buy one locally and swap it out. All of this, plus (at least the two times I've done it) it really isn't outside the realm of most DIYers to replace the fan motor if it is trash. Even if you can't get an exact replacement, you can probably get a close-enough generic replacement as long as you verify rotation, power, and RPM. I would expect the hardest part for someone with a limited tool set to be pulling the fan blade off of the old motor, since that might require some pry bars or possibly even a puller.
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Jun 21, 2022 00:05
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Bird in a Blender posted:Condensate amount is going to depend on the temperature of the coil, and then outside air temp and humidity. I don’t see why a heat pump would run at any different temp than a regular AC unit. It wouldn't. The only difference between a heat pump and plain air conditioning is the heat pump has the valving and controls needed to change which coil is condensing and which coil is evaporating. In cooling mode it's going to be exactly the same as any other AC.
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Jun 30, 2022 18:33
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Invalido posted:I forgot, I have some very rough performance numbers: I've been watching you post for a while now and somehow I only just now realized that your plan all along was literally just using the brine to cool a heat exchanger and not using it to cool the hot side of a regular heat pump. That's awesome. If my Google-fu is right that's about equal to somewhere in the range of 0.75-1 ton of cooling, which would definitely not be sufficient here in Phoenix, but I'd gladly take a ton of effectively free cooling to reduce the runtime on my five ton heat pump.
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Jul 5, 2022 02:36
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I was at 4 tons for 1400sqft in AZ in a ~2000 build with no massive air leaks and you needed all four tons in the worst of it, for sure. I'm at 5 tons on 1800sqft now in a different but similar ~2000 build. LA area should be somewhat better but not by a huge amount, poo poo gets plenty toasty there too.
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Jul 29, 2022 16:46
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Both my old and current houses seem to have typical insulation of the era - not great by current standards but there's no toasty-hot walls in the summer. All double-pane windows and both also have minimal windows facing east/west/south. Insulated in the attic as well, not that I've ever been up in either one longer than just enough to look around and climb back down the ladder. Going to a two-stage (on the old house) / fully variable (new house) heat pump was definitely worth it in terms of overall comfort, though.
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Jul 29, 2022 17:29
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I've had two Goodman heat pumps installed in the last two years so... I'm mostly happy with them. Both replaced original ~Y2K era builder-quality units; the first was an urgent replacement at my old house when the coil in the outside unit sprung a leak. I went with a mid-tier two-stage system there. Zero problems, much improved performance / much lower noise than the old system, and while I ended up selling the house before putting that system through a full summer, even at 90 degree average (average of high+low) days I was seeing a reduction of 20kWh on my daily usage. Current house I did a proactive replacement since the heat pump was original, I wanted to do it during the time of year when things wouldn't get too nasty outside, and I didn't want to be stuck with a hot house waiting on supply chain issues foreshadowing. Went with an Amana-branded fully-variable system. Worked perfectly again for months. Then in May we took a trip, and while we were gone our housesitters never mentioned the fact that they'd cranked the thermostat down and it never got to the set point despite running 24 hours nonstop. It took two weeks to get things finally fixed, largely because of parts availability. At first the system wouldn't spin up above 40%, and eventually it just quit altogether, with the compressor making all kinds of awful noises. The (fully warrantied) repair so far has been an entire new outside unit, and a new control board on the air handler. On top of that, the air handler control board is technically a temporary fix. The one that came in the air handler handles the variable stages on its own and works with typical 24VAC controls. The only control board they could get their hands on at that time requires a matching communicating thermostat. They were told "2-4 weeks" lead time on the "correct" control board in June and they're still getting that same answer now. I'm about to ask them if they can just leave this as a permanent setup since I think the communicating thermostat does a better job of varying the system versus actual load. I'm still happy with the unit and I don't doubt my HVAC company or their diagnostics work, which they went through with me in detail. I'm still trending out data for the summer but I think we're seeing more like a 40-50kWh daily usage drop from last summer for the same temperatures. I don't know that the system will ever pay for itself, but it is quiet.
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Aug 1, 2022 17:18
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meatpimp posted:Edit: Wow, they are exactly the same, other than "A" versus "G" as the leading letter of the part number. https://www.questargas.com/ForEmployees/qgcOperationsTraining/Furnaces/Goodman_GMVC96_Installation.pdf It is literally that, just part number and label differences. Technically I think my air handler has a Goodman sticker on it instead of Amana but they're all Daikin. The thermostat is branded as Comfortlink, but now that you gave me some search terms, yes, it appears to be Honeywell Prestige / Redlink. The thermostat I have on the wall right now has this exact touchscreen interface, in a slightly larger case. And yeah, HVAC is just another industry in supply-chain hell. We're friends with the owners of the HVAC company we used both times and they mentioned that in the before times, not only would the local Goodman supplier have the parts on hand, they'd also have staff available to get at the parts seven days a week. Right now the warehouse barely has anything, and they're only staffed enough to keep the warehouse open for banker's hours, which helped drag the repair time out longer. Really, the only fault I can put on Goodman here is that it took a few phone calls and videos before they'd acknowledge that "knocking like a Subaru" is not a normal operating mode for the compressor. They wouldn't authorize a swap on the whole outside unit initially because it was technically passing every other test they put it through.
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Aug 1, 2022 19:08
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knowonecanknow posted:On my second floor none of the rooms have a cold air return, that is big an in the ceiling of the hallway connecting all the rooms. Is there a code requirement for return pass-thru's to be installed above the doors? The doors are flush to the carpet and now the heat doesn't work in those rooms if you leave the door closed. If it's "code" I've never once seen it implemented anywhere I've lived. Of course, everywhere I've lived has had enough return airflow around the edges of a closed door (especially under) to at least get some heating/cooling with the door closed. Every place I've lived before has had only a single return per heat pump, my current place is the only one I've ever seen two returns on one heat pump and that's because I had the second return installed when we had the system replaced last year.
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Oct 31, 2022 22:37
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Having experienced condenser fan motor failures before, you're also likely to get the system into temperature/pressure lockout long before the compressor itself takes any damage. Replacing the condenser fan on most units I've had my hands on isn't trivial to the DIY-adverse, but is still a simple job to a pro or experienced DIYer. I wouldn't expect to pay much more than $500ish, heavily dependent upon what type of fan motor is required.
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Apr 13, 2023 00:20
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Are the numbers backwards, because I'm reading this as the fan is drawing well under its max rated load:Dr. Eldarion posted:I'm looking back at the checklist the original guys gave me, and this seems relevant: "Inspect condenser motor/fan: amperage rated 2.8, actual 1.4". The purpose of a megaohmmeter is to try and find short circuits in motor windings that may not be easily detectable by traditional meters.
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Apr 13, 2023 07:14
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H110Hawk posted:Is there such a thing in the USA as a variable speed heat pump for central heating/cooling that doesn't use some $600 bullshit proprietary thermostat? In theory, yes. I have an Amana (Goodman) system like this that uses a regular ecobee thermostat, but the outside and air handler units both communicate to decide on workloads. In practice, this poo poo sucking system is barely over two motherfucking years old and for the second god-damned time I am sitting in a 90+ degree house with no cooling, with another "failure we've never seen before". But when it does work it uses less electricity than the probably-reliable 20 year old system it replaced! gently caress me. 
IOwnCalculus fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Jul 17, 2023 |
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Jul 17, 2023 19:35
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Qwijib0 posted:huh-- do you use an app or something to also let the system know what the setpoint is, or does it just use timers like a 2-stage would with a single-stage thermostat? If you never used setbacks, then eventually I guess it would dial-in, but if you do then I don't see how it knows that the longer runtime is expected because now you're heating/cooling to a new setpoint rather than maintaining. My system is an AZVC20 condenser unit, and a MBVC20 air handler. It's worth noting that earlier versions of this same line did require a communicating thermostat as well. When the compressor died last year, it also inexplicably took the control board in the air handler with it, and being 2022 there was no inventory available of the right control board. My contractor loaned me an earlier revision and the associated communicating thermostat for a few months until they got their hands on the proper replacement parts. They also officially diagnosed it as a dead compressor this morning. At this point it's a matter of dealing with the Goodman warranty team and hopefully they'll approve it in time to get a new condensing unit installed tomorrow morning. The system worked perfectly right up until 7:15 Saturday night, at which point it finished a cycle and never restarted.
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Jul 18, 2023 03:22
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I have an Ecobee on a fully variable system and it just calls for heat/cool/fan as with a single-stage; the air handler and outside unit decide staging on their own. I'd say I'm happy with it but I've also had two years in a row of "this shouldn't ever happen" compressor failures, but the first of those was on a Nest. If for no other reason, I'll keep shilling for Ecobee because of beestat.io.
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Sep 1, 2023 23:42
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The Slack Lagoon posted:What sort of power needs does a heat pump need? We have 100 amp service and I assume we probably would need a service upgrade. We do currently have central AC on a 30amp breaker, so not sure if heat pump would need more than the existing circuit. Pretty small 970sf unit. Anecdote not data and all that, but my 20 SEER Amana 5-ton heat pump only needs a 35A breaker on the outside unit. The original-to-the-house unit it replaced had been wired with a 50A breaker but I don't know if that was overkill for whatever the nameplate rating on it was.
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Dec 8, 2023 19:48
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Shifty Pony posted:There is value in not having to worry about keeping space heaters around as backup for when your main source of heat is unable to maintain temperature in a cold snap. Is that not what the second-stage resistive heat is for, though? I admittedly have no experience with such things, because a properly-sized heat pump that meets the cooling needs in Arizona can output way more heat than needed on our coldest winter days.
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Mar 8, 2024 07:04
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Just checked and my Amana AVZC20 5-ton heat pump is rated for 59-75db in cooling and 65-79db in heating. It's immediately outside my home office (converted bedroom) and the only sound it makes at any point that is more than "oh it's running I guess" is when the reversing valve kicks in to defrost the outside unit during a long heating cycle.
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Apr 1, 2024 20:22
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Invalido posted:The worst I've ever done as an electrically curious pre-pubescent sprout was frying my dad's analog meter by using the current setting in error. A puff of magic smoke wafting from the plastic case and an angry father were the only consequences IIRC. I'd rather fry a cheap one than a nice Fluke or something until I figure out that the "A" settings is advanced mode. That analog meter was almost certainly built to a better standard than the sub-$8 DMMs available today, at least in terms of properly isolating the user from potentially hazardous voltages. Also, the benefit of a properly designed modern meter is that it is extremely unlikely that you will permanently damage anything other than a replaceable fuse.
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Apr 5, 2024 16:53
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