Air conditioner

(Scotland, if it matters). Hope this is an appropriate sub. My nephew is soon coming up from London to begin uni; he wasn't guaranteed student housing so he let a lovely new-build 1 bed flat (<10 years) - but it's largely south-facing with floor-to-ceiling windows, so it absorbs a tremendous amount of heat & doesn't circulate air very well when windows are open. Just yesterday at 4pm, the interior temp was 34° when it was 23° outdoors. A neighbour in an adjacent flat says that's pretty typical; ~8-10° warmer indoors at height of summer, and last year during the heatwave it broke 40° on several occasions. Flat owner says installing central air is categorically out of the question, but a portable system is fine if we wish to buy & install ourselves.

Entire flat is ~ 60 sq. metres, but we're thinking a single portable unit to cool the living room / office (~30sq. m) during the day. The bedroom doesn't get quite as hot as it's got less window area & it's primarily along the western wall, so we're thinking wait & see how it's affected if the living room can be made comfortable. Does this seem like a workable plan? The two models we've been considering are the AEG Comfort 6000 & MeacoCool MC 14000, but that's just from a bit of preliminary research & we're open to any suggestions or recommendations. Price isn't a huge concern.

Hi

I had a problem with my AC this weekend. Overnight the contactor got stuck and when I went out in the morning the lines to the compressor were frozen over.

I thawed the lines out and replaced the 24v single pole contactor.

I turned on the AC and nothing happened.

My thermostat has an R...Rc...W...Y..G terminal strip with R and Rc jumpered together. There is no C or COM at the thermostat.

I verified the Thermostat was working....R and Y would short together when cooling was called for.

So I went up into the attic and measured the voltage between R and COM on the control board. My Carrier board part number is HK42FZ009.

When thermostat was set for cooling, the blower would come on immediately and the control board would flash me the code 23. Code 23 is PRESSURE SWITCH DID NOT OPEN.

The voltage between R and COM only measured 12v on the control board.

Tracing the connection from the Transformer to the R terminal, it goes Transformer...FUSE FU1...LS....FRS1...FRS2...R

I disconnected the Transformer from the board and verified 24v output across SEC-1 and SEC-2.

I then connected it to the board and measured 24v at the fuse.

I did not take measurements at LS...FRS1...FRS2.

I took a measurement between R at the termstrip on the control board to Chassis GND. (Chassis ground...I assumed was connected to Earth Ground). I measured 24v.

So I put a jumper between COM and Chassis ground (ie a screw on the frame of the unit).

Now everything works fine. The AC kicks on and the code 23 went away.

My question is...why was everything working fine before my contactor got stuck if I only had 12v across R and COM?

Am I doing any damage by putting in a jumper between COM and Chassis?

What could cause this big of a voltage drop? Do I need a new control board?

I have attached schematics of my system. I have edited them to reflect what my setup is.

Hi, i wanted to buy a portable air conditioner (wall mounted isn't an option for me) but I've read that the ones with dual hoses are way more efficient. The problem is that they are also more rare to find for a strict budget. I was wondering if it was possible to build a hose myself around the intake, assuming it was clearly visible on the back. Am i missing something or is as simple as that?

Our house came with this lovely air conditioning unit . Fortunately the "outside" is a three-season room so it doesn't get as cold as the outside, but I'd love to block it up somehow since removing it isn't an option. I have the one side (in the house) stuffed with as much insulation as possible, and was thinking of just covering the vents on the outside with plastic and tape, but does anyone have any better (or better looking) ideas? Thanks!

I'm your friendly HVAC repairman here to share my munificent expertise. I have 19 yrs experience working on mostly residential central heating and air conditioning. To avoid common complaint replies, The following caveats apply to everything written here: This post is directed at middle class homeowners with forced air split systems (inside heater and outside air conditioner). This post assumes budget is a very real concern, and will lean towards cheaper DIY points as opposed to hiring a team of mechanical engineers to optimize your comfort/efficiency ratio. This post assumes you are fairly handy. Never do any repairs without fundamentally understanding what you are working on. Being over your head while working on your system can cost you lots of $$$ in professional repair or medical/funeral costs. Yes I know "Freon" is a trademarked name for a refrigerant.

Your AC worked decently last summer, and just want to do maintenance: Replace or clean your air filters. These are either in the return air grills or at the furnace. Air flow is king for a working air conditioner. Dirty filters throw off the working pressures in the freon circuit and can cause all sorts of chaos. Loss of efficiency and capacity, uncomfortable rooms due to low air flow, and freezing up the evaporator coil (which kills ALL air flow, can make a water mess, and can damage the compressor outside $$$). The cheap fiberglass disposable filters are enough to protect the system from dirt build-up, and allow the most air flow. Higher end pleated and electrostatic filters will improve air quality but will also get dirty faster and restrict airflow more. Depending on the house, and usage, you should change filters anywhere from monthly to seasonally. Most should be every 1-2 months, the writing on the filter package is meaningless. Change when there is visible dirt on it.

Wash your outside Air Conditioner (condenser), remove obstructions. Again, air flow is king. If your AC condenser coil is packed with grass clippings, stuck in a corner with fences, walls, dumpsters, its not going to work well. Do not put a screen around it. Do not build a shade over it. Do not put try to hide it with a lattice or any other enclosure. Your AC wants to be free with the wind blowing across its face. Use a garden hose to wash out dirt, cottonwood, dog hair, grass, etc from the coil. The best way is to disconnect the power, lift the top (try to avoid having to disconnect fan motor wires, otherwise take a pic to get them back on right) and spray with water from the inside out. Let dry before turning power back on if water got into electrical area.

Your AC has done broke itself, should you repair or replace? If your system is over 5 yrs old, most of the time it is going to have the R-22 freon. This stuff became expensive. The EPA got cranky a few years ago and accelerated the planned phase out to the newer R-410a. In everyday terms this means you will not likely replace just the outside air conditioner if it has a major problem. At minimum you will likely be replacing the evaporator coils as well. If you are replacing the AC and coil, many times you are getting close to the price of doing the complete system including furnace.

This situation reduces homeowner's practical choices. Air conditioners used to be replaced all the time for <$2000 while leaving the older (generally longer life span) furnace and coil in place. Most of the time now you are looking at either patching together the AC or spending the $4000+ (sometimes very +) for a complete system.

Them feds also bumped up the efficiency requirements for ACs. Its a regional phase out, but most systems installed this summer will be 14 SEER minimum. The industry has been prepared for this so the price jump isn't too bad this time.

ANYWAYS... Send me your questions. I will help you choose the correct duct tape and baling wire to hold your old air conditioner together. There are a ton of easy fixes out there that a handy homeowner can do to avoid us nasty repairmen with our exorbitant bills.

Im also a high level sorcerer when it comes to geothermals, tankless water heaters, and lots of other arcane house needs.

I do not believe boilers, chillers, and fuel oil furnaces exist. If you insist you have one of those mythical things in your house, please respect my beliefs by not asking about them. I live in an area of the US where we dont truck with them goofy things. basically I'm saying I have zero experience with them and would be blowing smoke if I gave advice

I will respond to questions not completely answered by others in this thread, you may just have to be a touch patient with me

So my DeLonghi Pinguino Portable Air Con is not producing cold air when I turn the AC mode on and is just pushing out room temp air instead.

I’ve tried all the troubleshooting answers online including cleaning the air filter, insuring everything is screwed on properly, drained any excess water, etc. There is no error code on the screen and all the controls seem to be working properly. There are no kinks or blockages in the hose either.

The one thing I have noticed is that when on AC mode, the exhaust/vent is not blowing hot air outside - which it used to when it was working last year.

It is only a year old and worked perfectly fine last year. It’s been stored upright when unused and covered fully with the plastic sheet it came in.

I’m not sure why it’s not blowing cold air and would appreciate any advice or tips on how to fix this!

I have an old Trane air conditioner and I am cleaning the coils but I accidentally disconnected some wires from the fan.

Does the red wire connect in next to the other red wire and the blue one connects to the other side?

Recently moved to a rental home in GA. It's so hot outside. When we moved in, I noticed the AC would run the entire day and never once got to 73 - and my energy use has been sky high. Checked the air filter and it was just covered in an unbelievable amount of dust. Took it out, put a new one in, still weak air flow. Called the landlord, they sent the AC guy out, he cleaned coils, added refrigerant, 0% better. Only can make it down to 73 or 74 at night when the temp is below that. It's like I have to stand on a chair under the vent, lick my finger and hold it right up to it to feel any air flow. That's not normal, right? He said something about some kind of fan in the attic not running and said he'd call an electrician, but I can't imagine that making much of a difference. Any ideas on what I can do? My energy bill for a 3br house is about to be 350 dollars and it's not even that cool in here

So this is long but I need advice and a bit of community support on neighbour noise conflict - my neighbour recently doubled the size of his house and along with the build he installed two 15kw air conditioner compressors along the fence line between our brick houses.

The units are rated at 70db each at 1meter/yard and they are installed about 1.5m (about the same in yards) from the fence line. Via an app, they read 74db as air coolers and 67db as heaters at the fence line so they are very loud and have a deep penetrating bass rumble to the sound. Background noise here is very quiet at between 36-49db depending on the time of day.

All the bedrooms of my house are on this same wall and the rooms are now all filled with a deep drone bass noise along with a loud fan/wind noise. This is regardless if the windows are closed or open. Much louder when open.

I told the neighbour via text they are a noise problem 8 months ago when the builder left them on all night and he said he would ‘fix it’ and in the meantime he said they would be off at 9pm. Three days after he moved back in they were in operation every day for 2 months from 2pm until 11pm which is the latest legal limit for all loud plant machinery to be off in my state. But the law also ‘recommends’ no more than 5db above background noise at all other times.

He was planning to shroud them but had done nothing.

I left it to him for months to fix the problem thinking he had just moved in and was still landscaping celebrating and partying etc but it never happened. I spoke again to him 3 months later and offered to contribute $1000 to move them because they were too loud, and that I was going to ask someone to take a look at them (meaning council and/or EPA). He asked me to help him weld up a frame to sound proof them which was not my job to do. The next week he said he had an air conditioner installer take a look and advised that the units were probably louder than regulation and sound proofing probably wasn’t going to work for me the neighbour and they suggested he move them and quoted $2200 to relocate to the other side where there is a blank block with no house. My neighbour came back and asked me if the $1000 offer was still valid and I said yes. He asked for 4 weeks to arrange the cash and I said good.

This sees him out of summer.

About 8 weeks later and no update but summer is over and the noise has stopped for now. He has also been playing music outside every Saturday night until late. Right next to my 3yo bedroom which we were letting slide because she doesn’t care. This time he was playing bass that went right through our house at 11:30 one quiet night and my wife politely asked if he could turn the bass down he sounded drunk but did so. The next day he came on our porch and was angry that we were complaining so much (think we killed his buzz) and he threatened to play his drums of turn up his sons DJ equipment and how would we like that!? He said that he doesn’t complain when our kids scream like they have daggers in their eyes and that he was drawing a line not accepting any more complaints. We stood our ground calmly and said don’t threaten us but turn off your sub woofer at night - he did leave saying he would still move the units. And came back to apologise the next day saying he was out of line and said we still have the air conditioner to sort out. Music has completely stopped outside unusual hours so he is not all bad.

I spoke to him a week later and said my money is still ready and he said okay. Now 6 weeks later my problem is I didn’t nail a day and time down and he is clearly not interested in dropping cash on a problem his neighbour has.

All his actions appear to be delay tactics.

Now winter is here and the air conditioner becomes a heater so it is back on again every morning and night until 10-11pm and it is making me crazy. It is not even deep winter yet so I expect it will be all day soon. I don’t want to go home. I can’t go to my bed to sleep until it is off at his choice between 10-11 pm because I can’t tune it out or drown it out so I can’t have an early night. My bedroom is 33db with them off but with them on on it is 39db - it is a deep bass rumble that drones and won’t blend in. Like a car running in a driveway for hours.

My question is given these facts do I just go legal and involve the council or try once more putting an expiry date on the money offer? At this point is it neighbourly to withdraw the offer and go fully legal because the porch incident was pretty unpleasant with no action behind the apology.

My concern is that going legal is pure conflict this brings other problems, I am also worried that council told me they can be challenged in court so I might lose the case. Where do I find the strength to engage my neighbour in conflict that will become long term exhausting?

Edit - Link to Pics:

So I live in Vegas, and obviously this time of the year our AC's work pretty hard. Inexplicably, and my fault for not noticing when we bought the house, what I believe is the main drain (I am not very handy, so could certainly be wrong) is consistently leaking water into the garage filling a mid sized ice chest every 5-6 hours. We have insurance and they came out and said it was normal, there was no clogs in the main drain (which I don't know if that's true I cannot confirm as I am not good with this stuff) and that the builders installed the system to drain into the garage when they should have installed it to drain outside. Is this potentially a backup drain with the main drain and pan overflowing and insurance is screwing me around? They quoted me about 1000 (not covered) to fix it (simply running a pipe of some sort from the garage ceiling to a grate that already has a hole about 3/4 in inside 1 outside so I am sure this was done by previous owners). I tried my damndest to fix it with fitting and basic hoses from home depot and then realized I wasn't being very smart and should ask for help since I have no idea what I am doing. Please dont make too much fun of my makeshift attempt (I bought the wrong size fitting and tried to jerry rig it). Hopefully I didn't do irreparable damage because I got real makeshift with it on my attempt. I have attached some pics (1, why cant I post more than 1 pic?), any help or advice on an easy temporary fix while we go through it with insurance would be appreciated, my wife and I both work all day and its overflowing by the time we get home.

I have had my a/c for a few years and have never had a problem with this. I woke up this morning to find a large puddle of water in front of my air conditioner and I fear that this will cause damage long term if left untreated. I had searched online for some answers but got different answers between it being the condensate pump to some coils that need to be cooled and that this is natural. Well I have never seen it before in my years of operation and I know it's been emptied within the last week so it's not that the machine's water bay is full of water.

Specs: Brand - Black and Decker Portable air conditioner Model - BPACT10 Volts - 115 Hz - 60 Watts - 1150 Amps - 11.5 Design pressure: High - 565.5 PSI Low - 245.6 PSI R41OA 16.2 Ozs Serial Number - BPACT10WT471900423 Indoor humidity: 51% Indoor temperature: 70 Fahrenheit Outdoor temperature: 54 Fahrenheit

That is all the information that I could think of to be relevant in any manner. Please help me!

I wanted to save some money and bought an activator carbon filter designed for extractor hood, then I cut it to put in my air conditioner. It cost me $5 instead of $50.

What do you think?

It looks like it does the job of removing the smell. I don't really understand why it has to be so expensive for air conditioner.

First time home owner fixing up my new home. Trying to place vent covers over however there are no mounting holes. How should I go about mounting them properly and repairing the damage here?

This house is in Virginia, USA. It was built in the 80's.

I have sliding windows where the window screen/mesh either comes out completely or not at all. I would like to put the exhaust hose for the air conditioner on top in the window ideally without removing the window screen/mesh. I’m just wondering if this is dangerous or if it will impact performance

We are in Florida (Tampa area). As you would expect, our south-facing home's garage gets pretty toasty most of the year. The problem is that the master bedroom is directly above the garage and it doesn't appear to be insulated well. That means heat tends to build up in the garage and work its way into the bedroom, making it pretty hot. We'd crank the AC, but the kids end up freezing.

We've played with adjusting the vents, etc., but haven't had much luck. During an inspection, the agent showed us readings that the front of the house is at least ten degrees hotter.

Anyhow, we looked into adding another zone added to our AC unit, but the cost is pretty up there. We started looking at hybrid hot water tanks as they are supposed to help draw out some of the heat in the room, but they are pretty pricy and reviews are mixed...

So...what about just adding a single unit AC? It wouldn't need to run all of the time and only in the hotter 9 months of the year. Maybe a crazy idea, but as summer approaches, we're trying to consider all options.

For the sake of this post, does anyone have a garage cooling method they prefer or would recommend?

Last night, out of nowhere, my window unit started blowing the worst smelling air. Think, run over skunk with a hint of brimstone. I woke up and checked outside but could smell nothing. Any thoughts on what it is?