Tonight, Tasha remarked that it was warm in here. I was feeling rather swampy myself, so I went and checked the thermostat. 80 degrees. Air conditioning on. PROBLEM.
I went outside to find the unit was iced up from the unit to the house. I turned it off, allowed it to de-ice a bit, and found that the insulation on the pipe was crumbling. I called TroubleFree to come and check it out, but they said they wouldn’t be able to make it until Monday at this rate.
I decide to head to Menards to get some fresh insulation for that pipe. The previous technician had told me that it was good to keep that in order, so I figure I’d at least try to fix the only thing that I knew about on the damned thing.
About one minute after driving down the road, my cell phone rang. It was TroubleFree, asking me if I lived next to a hard of hearing old man. I said I did, and he told me that he heard my address come across the dispatch and told them he was coming there anyway, may as well save an additional trip.
Turns out I was 3.5 lbs low on my freon. $268 dollars and two hours later we were good to go. The guy recommended running it for an hour or so with just the fan running, which would ensure that if the core was iced up it would return to working order without issue. Its already feeling MUCH better in here, and honestly I was expecting it to be a LOT more expensive than that.
I’m beginning to think this house hates me!
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So what happened to the freon? Was there a leak?
The last guy that came said there was a small leak but they couldn’t locate it. This guy said that some units just end up needing recharged every 3-5 years during their life cycle and that his gauges didn’t indicate a leak.
He did say that the unit is getting on in years and that I should think about replacing it in 2-3 years, but was satisfied that the thing was refilled adequately and that there wasn’t an overt leak.
So that’s about all I know on the matter!
I’m beginning to think this house hates me!
Insert Poltergeist reference
Freon leak… yuck. That’s a problem. To really test for Freon they need to run the heck out of the unit, not test it cold when it’s not under any pressure. Then stick a vaccum gauge on it for awhile (24 hours). Any slow leaks will be picked up.
If you have to replace fittings or lines, a buddy of mine introduced me to a way to salvage the freon; when he moved his AC, he ran the compressor backwards and pumped the freon out of the lines in to the tank. Then moved the AC, piped it back up, and ran it. I thought he was BS’ing me but it worked, so whatever..
Kind of a redneck solution but if you’re going to replace it anyway in a few years, might not hurt to give it a shot. If you’re going to replace the AC anyway you’ve got nothing to lose when it comes time.
Have you ever watched the movie “The Money Pit”????? I think you should put it at the top of your rental list.
I had a somewhat similar problem at my old house. The old central air pump had a leak that would require a couple of pounds per year to keep the a/c going. The year before I sold the house I bought one of the new high efficiency ones for $3k. The cool part about it was the cost to run it was nearly half what the old one was and the freon was the new cheaper kind (as the old stuff is ungodly expensive per pound). Good Luck with the upkeep!
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