Question about air conditioning?
Question:
OK…..we live in AZ and it has been about 112-114 for the past week so the a/c has been running a lot to keep the house at 80. On Friday, I was sitting on the couch watching a movie with the kids and it was a comfortable 80 degrees in the house. By the time the movie was over it was up to 86 degrees. My husband looked at the a/c and said it was frozen so we waited for it to defrost and started the a/c again last night and it got down to 85 degrees and now this morning it’s back up to 87 and the coils are frozen again. Any ideas/advice/suggestions to prevent this from happening?
Additional Details:
2 days ago
Some of the time it lightly blows cold air (but not enough to cool it down any in the house) and others times no air at all.
Reply:
One of two reasons why this is probably happening.
First, the airflow across the indoor coil is low. Due to either the filter or coil being blocked, cleaning these will fix that problem. Or the indoor fan or motor is not working properly.
Secondly, you may have a freon leak in the machine. If so then there is nothing you can do to fix it, you will need specialist help.
As suggested above, in some machines, mainly the window type, if they are run continuously over extended periods of time (I mean hours and hours) without cycling off then you may get ice forming on the indoor coil. This is also an indication that the machine is undersized and overworked.
Hope this helps.
Friday, November 21st 2008 at 3:01 am
I moved down to Texas from Alaska.The a/c central air/no heat.Inside of the home where the evaporater is located,utility room with a door going into the dining area/kitchen. They cut a square 21 3/4by21 3/4 in the utility wall going into the dining/kitchen for the return air to recool the house.Then 3 feet up the wall is the termostat above it.I know the termostat is in the wrong area.I don’t understand why would you want to recool the air from the inside where they have two resister on each side of the inside door leading into the dining rm/kitchen.This just doesn’t sit well with me trying to figure this out.I would thing common would tell you to first to have return air come into this evaporater from the outside?Also move the thermostat from the wall where as the resister isn’t blowing cold air around this area.I talked to the A/c tech up the street who put this unit in back in 1994 when the house was built.He said what I was talking about is a gas unit.HUH! I looked at him cross eye scatch my head,well you can guess the rest.Please Its killing me trying to find a correct answer or a direction that I can start to look at.
Going Nuts In South Texas coast!
Friday, November 21st 2008 at 9:16 am
It is a little hard understanding how the A/C system is fitted without seeing a schematic of your layout.
Judging by your description it seems there are some discrepancies but it is really hard to grasp the system without seeing a drawing of the installation.
Firstly, the return air in a ducted domestic system does not use outside air normally as it tends to add too much to the installation price and also adds significantly to the heat load. Return air is recirculated air which after blowing from the supply ducting then flows and finds it’s way to the return air grille and consequently the suction side of the evaporator coil.
A thermostat is usually located near the return air grille or reasonably close so it can have a chance of knowing what temperature is in the internal space. Lets face it, how can an air conditioner really provide stable temperatures throughout the home in many different rooms that have differing heat loads (one room could be facing the sun and another room may be in the shade).
Also, what is this resistor you mentioned?