I noticed today that it took an hour for our A/C unit to take our house temperature from 81 to 80. This sounds horrendously inefficient to me. There must be something wrong with our AC unit so I found a local family (son and dad) company to come service it/clean the coils/diagnose any possible issues for $94 and $64 for 1lb of refrigeration and $34 per pound after that. Is this reasonable? I am still shopping around but I have heard these guys are great and have reasonable prices. I don't think our AC or furnace have ever been looked at since it was installed (12years ago when the house was built). We did have refrigeration added to our AC about 3 years ago, but that is all that was done.
No one? Alright, I am going to go ahead and make an appointment with people I mentioned above. Their prices are around the same as other companies in this area.
Yeah, I was going to suggest talking to Miller as well. Those rates sound reasonable to me though. And holy fuck, 80 degrees? No wonder your energy bill is so low. There's a bare minimum of comfort I'm willing to give up in order to save a buck. Anything over 75 degrees = no way in hell.
Who knows, we might lower it if our AC starts to work that much better. 80 is fine for me, I would have it at 82 if I could have things my way.
82 is outside of the comfort zone for even the old people I know! Is it purely a money issue, or do you actually prefer it that warm?
well that price for the refrigerant really isnt reasonable, a 30lb of r-22 is about $190.00 so that would be 190/30 = $6.30 a lb. But then again they are going to jack the price up, and will be charging for labor. You could honestly go out and clean your coils yourself. Just shut down the unit and spray them down with a hose, not to ruin the fins with a direct stream but enough to get any dirt off them. You will tell by looking at them how dirty they are. See if crud is built up between the coil fins. Unless you do have some sort of leak the thing shouldnt need any refrigerant. But from what you said they added refrigerant 3 years ago, that is telling me there is a leak and they company was just to lazy to try to look for it. If they do add refrigerant ask if they found any leak. You could go to your air handler and try to see if they thing is blowing out any kind of cold air. Maybe take out your filter and try to feel the coil to see if its cold.
Also, you are paying for the EPA certification that the serviceman has. That shit is expensive in the civilian world (some in excess of $2500). Thank God the Navy has supplied me with my universal certification (with the nice ID card). And wanna know the best part? It was FREE!!! ~Will Courtier~
if the ac is an outdoors boxtype ac.. pull the plug or circuit breaker on it. get the water hose and thoroughly wash out the radiator fins... alot of people let their get clogged with dirt and leaves from yesteryears causing a major overheating/over pressuring in the ac system.. this turns into not producing cold air. adding refridgerant isnt a DIY unless you got the tools and real know how.. just call up an ac guy and get it inspected right if ac coil cleaning doesnt help. ehhh hubcap beat me to it.
pull the disconnect. use a foamy coil cleaner on the condenser coils and let it work for 10 minutes. Then spray water from the inside-outwards to clean the coils. If you have low charge there is a leak. period. freon doesn't just dissapate. finding a leak isn't hard. just look for dirty oil spots on the lines and most importantly the joints. if the charge is low, the low pressure switch will protect the compressor by cutting it out. worse case scenario is a failed compressor. that requires that you flush the system and replace the drier as well as repacement of the compressor.
It's millers time to shine! Anyways, they're gouging you on refer... we just bought a pallet at 140$ a 30lb jug, so about $4.60 a pound. I'm not sure exactly how much we charge, we do mark it up a lot because the average joe can't just go out and buy it. 22 has doubled in the last year, last season we bought a pallet for 60$ a jug, and you also have to take into effect different rates in different geographic locations. ANYWAYS, those prices seem high. Next... Whats running, is the compressor running? Is the fan outside running? is the fan in the furnace running? If none of those are running, thats a first step to diagnosing your problem Clean the coils yourself. I have found the best way to clean coils is using compressed air. I've found that using water just mats in the shit. take off the condenser fan (pull the disconnect first) blow with compressed air from the inside out first, then the outside in. brush it off with a soft brush, repeat a few time until no more shit comes out... some condensers have layered coils and require you to slip them, brush them off and blow them off. be careful not to crack coils if your gonna try and do this yourself. I'm also opposed to using chemicals on coils. Chemicals are what... acid based, spraying acid on coils year after year doesn't seem like the most logical thing to do to keep a system running. EPA certs are easy and cheap, i passed my test just by looking at the book, then taking the test, i think it cost about 75 to 100$ Leaks... leaks are funny. you defiantly have a leak if you have to add refrigerant to your system. 3 years to leak out is a very slow leak. It could take a tech anywhere from 4 hours to 8-10 hours to fix a leak. They have to first find the leak, it may be in one of the solder joints (easy) or it may be on the back of the A-coil, requiring them to take out the a-coil. They then have to recover the refrigerant, which takes about an hour, pump in nitro, find the leak, repair it, vacuum down, charge the system. It took me about 3.5 hours to fix a leak today that took 5 minutes to find. and the system was dry. When i come across systems with leaks, especially slow leaks i explain to the customer that it could take me 8-10 hours at 75$ an hour to find this and repair it. if it only leaks out every 3 years it might be more cost effective, especially on older equipment just to charge it up every other year, until you replace the equipment (average life span is about 20 years on decent equipment) But then again this unit today took 20 pounds of r22, thats 400$ in refer, you don't want to be doing that every other year.... Well thats the short and skinny of it, let me know whats all running and i might be able to direct you from there. maybe i should have started with the easy fix first.... is your filter clean?
I just replaced my Rheem unit with a more efficient Trane XL14C, that is about all we need and it keeps the house cool, just got to replace my foundation vents, they stay open all the time and it heats the house up
I don't know how to explain it, I have vents in the block part of my foundation, they are pouring out cold air, I have no insulation in my floors yet and it is killing the ability for it to cool
All fans are running and we change our filter about every 2 months or so. I called around and these guys seem to have the lowest refrigeration prices around. Someone said $79 for the first 1lb! I did take a hose to the coils but I just put my thumb on the end of the hose and cleaned it outside in, instead of inside out like you said. There is no way in hell I am taking apart the top of the ac unit and taking the spinning fan thing out. I'll just have it done by someone else. If the leak is not an easy fix I think I will just have it filled again 3 years from now and then just replace the whole unit. Thanks for all the help guys. I will update this thread once I get my ac looked at.
Actually, change of plans. A family friend is going to come over and take a look at it. He was the one that came 3yrs ago and filled our tank with refrigeration for free. He admitted that he should have probably patched the leak then and this time he is going to come do that. Hopefully it is an easy fix but if it is as involved as miller said it can sometimes be I think I will just have him fill our tank for cheap and have him go on his way.
