Thursday, May 11, 2017

Central Air

Both Belle and I grew up in houses that didn't have central air or heat.  For that matter, my children grew up in a house with a window unit, and some nights we slept hot.  That is no longer the case.

In the Deep South, central air conditioning has become a necessity.  Belle promised herself that when she got grown, she'd never again sleep in a cold house during the winter, and I promised myself that I'd never sleep in a hot house in the summer.

Over the past couple of days, I noticed that the AC wasn't keeping up with the weather.  It seemed to struggle a bit to keep the house cool.  I changed the filters and the outside stuff, but that didn't seem to help.  Before I call an AC mechanic, I'm going to do what I can, so this afternoon, I stopped by my local hardware store and got a bottle of something called Coil Clean.

Got home, killed the power and took the fan off the outside condenser unit.  It was pretty nasty.  I followed the label directions, sprayed Coil Clean all over the inside of the unit, then hooked up a garden hose.  I sprayed out the condenser from the inside-out.  The crap that jumped out of the coil was amazing.  After I spayed everything down two or three times, I figured it was clean and re-assembled the unit.  got power to it and the fan kicked on.

I put up my tools and headed inside.  It seems to be blowing cold air, but we'll give it an hour and see if it gets down to the thermostat setting.

I may have just saved myself a sevice call.

5 comments:

Miguel GFZ said...

If it is in the cards and the unit is close or past 10 years of age, you may want to change for a new one. They have become incredibly efficient, specially the ones with dual fans/dual speeds. Your state's electric company may even give you a rebate for buying a new unit.
One thing I can tell you for sure is that our electric bill has come down about 40% which is no simple feat when you live in South Florida and might turn off the AC maybe 3 weeks a year. We are very happy with Trane and I would advise against Rheem AC, we got burned bad with that collapsing heap of rusting parts after only 5 years of use.

Ryan said...

When I lived near you my AC went out in August. It sucked. I've slept hot in the south an other places outside but it sucks. I'll pay the money an keep my little place at a reasonably comfortable temperature.

Jonathan H said...

I live MUCH farther north than you and I still use my AC alot - I don't like sleeping in a hot house either. AC is a great invention, to me it is right behind modern plumbing!

Anonymous said...

Heh, during the summer in Wisconsin it can get hot and muggy. We called it humidity but now they call it "the dew point". Well some of those summer nights got real "dewy". I remember sleeping on the living room floor in front of the porch screen door; just wishing for a breeze to waft through.

Steve

Old NFO said...

Yep, we get older, we 'like' our comfort... :-) I need to find that stuff and do mine... sigh