An unofficial chapter of the popular Dull Men's Club.
1. Relevant commentary on your own dull life. Posts should be about your own dull, lived experience. This is our most important rule. Direct questions, random thoughts, comment baiting, advice seeking, many uses of "discuss" rarely comply with this rule.
2. Original, Fresh, Meaningful Content.
3. Avoid repetitive topics.
4. This is not a search engine
Use a search engine, a tradesperson, Reddit, friends, a specialist Facebook group, apps, Wikipedia, an AI chat, a reverse image search etc. to answer simple questions or identify objects. Also see rule 1, “comment baiting”.
There are a number of content specific communities with subject matter experts who can help you.
Some other communities to consider before posting:
5. Keep it dull. If it puts us to sleep, it’s on the right track. Examples of likely not dull: jokes, gross stuff (including toes), politics, religion, royalty, illness or injury, killing things for fun, or promotional content. Feel free to post these elsewhere.
6. No hate speech, sexism, or bullying No sexism, hate speech, degrading or excessively foul language, or other harmful language. No othering or dehumanizing of anyone or negativity towards any gender identity.
7. Proofread before posting. Use good grammar and punctuation. Avoid useless phrases. Some examples: - starting a post with "So" - starting a post with pointless phrases, like "I hope this is allowed" or “this is my first post” Only share good quality, cropped images. Do not share screenshots of images; share the original image.
.
Those caps are easy and cheap to replace. Just be careful about shorting them to drain them.
My heat pump went out this spring. It was blowing 3 amp fuses and I couldn't figure out where. So I had to call the local HVAC repair to come out. It took him 2 hours to trace the short because it was intermittent. I hate intermittent faults.
This one makes me a GOD to my friends. One 4th of July ours blew, and we paid a guy like $550 to come put in a new capacitor. And then I googled the cost and, when I woke up from the seizure it gave me, I ordered a few to match my condensers. Now I try to make sure my friends don't have to pay that particular emergency-rate cost.
Not pictured was the 3hrs of rechecking the process via YouTube to make sure I wasn't going to electrocute myself. Next I have to clean the coils.
Always wash the coils twice a year! Spring and Fall!
measure ~~twice~~ 40x, touch once!
after all, one can never be too safe when working with the danger pixies.
I work with things that you can only touch once. After that you literally won't want to touch them again. You also won't want to touch anything else 😜. Come to think of it, you won't want or desire anything, think about anything. More love or singing or running or moving much more than a passing twitch every few milliseconds.
This is one if my favorite fixes. Capacitors are significantly cheaper than a new air conditioner, easy to test with the right multimeter, and so easy to replace that most people could do it with minimum research.
A lot of broken appliances are due to bad capacitors. Sometimes they are easy to spot because they bulge. I was given a large broken television, found a bulged one and had it replaced. Worked for the past 8 years
The last time I had someone look at the AC they suggested a "capacitor saver" for something absurd like $300. Seems like maybe not a great deal after all. Glad I told them no.
Bonus pic of the neighbor's
Are these things universal? Or are they specific to each unit?
I imagine that some are interchangable but it would depend on the unit. Some might have different capacitors based on how big the unit is, how old, etc.
Thats just from my limited knowledge of electrical and YouTube watching skills. Your mileage may vary.
You look up the model and it will tell you the size of capacitor to get. They are like $15 if you order them online
Mine actually had the part listed in a paper inside the unit. Turns out the last AC guy put the wrong size in mine
It was probably just the size he had on the truck. And he wasn't about to go back to the shop to get the right one. He's ain't got time for that shit.
Lol thats always fun. Nice when the unit actually has useful info to say what's required.
i keep a new capacitor stored in my garage so i don't have to go 2 days without AC each time it goes out (I'm on hot and humid climate) , which is every 24 months on average
Just FYI, these should not be failing every 2 years - there is something else wrong causing them to fail.
Yeah, I ended up talking to a tech at a company that makes capacitors and he said that if that happens it might be the coiling and/or compressor involved. These are supposed to last 5 years before failing. I didn't really understand what he was saying, so I guess I'm off to YouTube to look at other repairs
You might look into a hard start kit. It's a secondary capacitor and a relay which helps with the extra load at startup. Get the kind with separate capacitor and relay, not the all in one kind.
For a second I thought I was looking at one of these.
Every time my A/C goes out it's those damn graboids!
Did you try turning it off and then turning it back on again?
What is the symptom that says it's the capacitor? I'm guessing it starts the compressor, so the fan runs but no cold?
If you have multimeter, even a cheap one will do, you can test them. there are you tube videos that can show you how to test them even with a cheap meter that doesn't have a capacitance test setting, just ohms.
Usually they bulge and if you know what it's supposed to look like, it's quite apparent that it's dead.
The cap is what's used to provide the power necessary for the initial start, so, it that doesn't happen, it's the quick and easy thing to check (I keep a set of the ones mine takes on a shelf ... 30 for a set of 2 and 10 minutes of time to replace or a small fortune for an HVAC guy to replace)
Your inside furnace fan might still run, but, on mine at least, the outside unit fan doesn't run if the cap is dead
Pretty much anything - outside fan isn't running? Outside fan is running but air not cool? Obv it can be more, but it's a very cheap first attempt. And cheap enough to keep on hand like you do
Starting or running capacitor?
Running I believe
