Top 5 Things AC Companies Don't Want You To Know How To Do!

so in this video I'm going to go over some of the top things that AC companies do not want you knowing how to do or that you're even allowed to do them so let's go ahead and Jump Right In let's go so one of the top items that you as a homeowner can do without a question and is going to save a ton of money but also allow for your unit to run as efficiently as possible and this needs to be done on a fairly regular basis at least yearly and that's by cleaning the AC unit and I don't just mean a little rinse off I mean it needs to have a deep cleaning done especially if you've gone for quite a bit of time without doing so and it's really not that difficult to do you just want to make sure that the power is off you want to remove the top out of the AC unit and then you're going to use some sort of a cleaner now there's a lot of debate as to which ones are best you also need to be careful about what kind of coils you have if you have Micro Channel coils you would not want to use a lot of the coil cleaners that are out there however most people do not have that but these coil cleaners are fairly inexpensive and they're also incredibly easy to use and all you really have to do is spray those coils down all the way around the unit and for my particular unit I do the inside and the outside then after that coil cleaner has been put on it just needs to sit for a little while and then you give it a heavy rinse off now the coil cleaner that I like to use is made by a company called Web it is extremely effective and the company themselves have said that will do no damage to any of the metals that would be on an AC unit so you don't have to worry about the corrosive properties of a lot of those cleaners then after all that's done you can clearly see with your eye that it is way way cleaner and your AC unit is going to run more efficiently it's going to run a lot quieter and since it's running more efficiently and the way it's supposed to run it's going to extend the life of your AC unit now I've seen quotes by AC companies that range anywhere from 150 dollars all the way up to one person in the comments let us know that their AC company quoted them 500 in order to clean their AC unit where this only cost me about 10 to 20 bucks depending on what I use and about a half an hour of my time the next repair that AC companies don't want you to know how to fix or know what the problem is to begin with has to do with this condensate line right here now if you've ever gone to your thermostat and you've seen where it's just showing blank it's not showing any numbers some thermostats will do that whereas some will still show the numbers but when you go to turn the AC on nothing kicks on one of the main reasons for that is these condensation lines can become plugged and when these become plugged they don't allow obviously water to flow through them the drain pan that is in your air handler will then start to fill up and your air handler is equipped with a safety switch on it to where if that drain pan fills up too high it will flip a switch that a lot of times then will cut power going to your thermostat which is why you don't see anything on it or it's just going to disable the system so the AC unit can't run anymore and further cause water to build up in the pan what I like to do is I actually like to use a shop vac and a lot of AC com companies this is how they do it as well so they'll get a shop vac and they have an attachment where they can attach it to the end of the condensation line to make a good seal obviously as a homeowner we're typically not going to have that so I like to just use some shop towels to fill the Gap and it will provide enough suction in order to help pull whatever clog is in this line and pull it out and I find doing it this way does an incredibly good job of doing that typically your plugs are not going to be so big that they're not just going to be able to be pulled out especially by something as powerful as a shop vac and the other nice thing about the shop vac is it's going to continue trying to pull that plug all the way through the line and it's also going to pull any of that dirty water with it and just suck it up now one of the main ways those condensation lines get plugged up is due to people that are just not doing the standard maintenance that they need to be doing and I'm talking as standard as changing out their air filters you need to be changing these out about every three months just to make sure that you're keeping it clean not only is it going to allow for your AC unit to run better but it's also going to allow for this to do its job and catch all of that dust and stuff that can eventually get into your condensation line and start plugging it up people that do not change these out on a regular basis are more likely to run into that issue where you're going to have a plug condensation line the air filter is not going to completely absolve this issue from possibly happening sometimes mold can build up and be the issue but a lot of the times it has to do with things that the air filter is supposed to catch now for these next fixes I actually need to get into my AC unit but before I do that I want to make sure that I turn the power off that is going to my AC unit and I can do that by on the side of the house there should be some form of Disconnect my disconnect just pulls right out of the box where you may have a circuit breaker or some sort of a fuse where you just need to turn it off then once that's off all I need to do is remove these four screws and then this metal panel will just slide down and then come right off all right so two of the main components in an AC unit you've got this over here where we've got these two hot wires coming in this is what's feeding the AC unit this is called the contactor this silver cylinder over here this is the capacitor now typically these contactors are not the things that actually go bad they can go bad but in order to go over everything this would probably be about a 40 minute video so I'll just go over some of the more common issues that you may find with the contactor all right so I turn my power back on just to give you an idea of what can be looked for so if I go and I take my probes and I put them on those two leads you can see I've got around 240 volts which is exactly what we want if I put my probes on the two top terminals you'll see we don't have any voltage there and that's because currently the thermostat is not calling for any air to be put into the house once the thermostat calls for air to be put into the house you've got some terminals here on the side you see these wires over here on the side these are coming from the thermostat then are going to cause the internal contacts of this contactor to be pulled in and then make contact or bridge between the bottom and the top which then will send the power onto the rest of the unit and you can manually cause for the contacts to make contact and it's just as easy as using a screwdriver now I want to make sure I'm holding the insulated end and all I have to do is push that little button in and it's going to kick on the fan and then eventually the compressor so this contactor seems to be in good working order everything kicked on once I pushed in the contacts in order to make that connection between the two terminals but if for instance if I was to push on this and push those contacts in and the AC unit would not have started up then oftentimes it still is not the contactor that's necessarily the issue a lot of times bugs can get inside or on these contactors get underneath of those points and then when those contacts get pulled down in order to make the connection between the two terminals you don't have a good connection the bug or Whatever Gets inside of there can actually serve as an insulator now this particular one will probably never have that issue with bugs getting in there because they have put these faces on them but a lot of contactors are just open face to where it's very easy for a bug to crawl in there and cause that problem however if that's the problem it's just as easy as cleaning off those points and a lot of times this will go back to working but let's say that our Ace unit just is not even turning on well the first place I would check would be my bottom terminals again and as you can see I have no voltage there it's still reading zero so oftentimes when this happens it's something incredibly easy a circuit breaker got turned off the disconnect was pulled but there's something that's interrupting the power from the house to this AC unit so the problem is somewhere between this AC unit and the circuit breaker and the breaker panel but let's say that we do have 240 volts down here we've set our thermostat to a temperature that it's going to kick on the AC and call for air but we come out here and it didn't pull down this plunger here to where it would make contact between the two terminals then we know that we probably have some sort of an issue with the contactor itself or it could still be with the thermostat but this is where then I would cut power to the AC unit again using that disconnect then I would remove the wires off of the sides of the contactor and before doing that if you don't know where they're supposed to go it's always a good idea to snap a picture just to make sure you put the wires back where they're supposed to be then once I've got those wires removed I'll take my multimeter and I want to move it over here to check the resistance so on each side of the contactor where those wires were attached you'll see these metal terminals all I'm going to do is take one of my probes put it to one side take the other probe put it on the other side clear we have continuity there and this is showing that I'm getting about 15 ohms so this particular contactor appears to be in good shape you're looking for anywhere between probably about 6 to 20 or 22 ohms that's going to point to the contactor being in good condition but if you're getting really low readings or you're getting really high readings or in a lot of cases it'll show ol which means open Line like it's showing right now then you very well may have a bad contactor and it needs to be replaced now these are just a couple of the things to look for on a contactor if you suspect it to be the issue there are quite a few other tests that can be done in other scenarios that can happen such as this getting stuck on and the thermostat not being able to turn it off that again could point to a contactor issue but we'd have to go a little bit further and do other testing in order to check that out making sure that we've got 24 volts coming in from the thermostat for one but these are some of the most common things that AC techs look for when you have an edge issue with the contactor but now let's talk about what is probably the number one repair or service call that is made and that has to do with this run capacitor over here now this capacitor itself is a brand new one I just had to replace it but this is probably one of the most common issues that somebody's going to come across with their AC unit in my case the fan would turn on but the compressor would not come on and I wouldn't get any cold air it could be the opposite of that or you may see symptoms of where the AC unit just won't turn on at all the good news is this one in particular ran me right around 10 or 11 dollars so they're not a terribly expensive thing to replace as long as you know what you're doing now on capacitors you have what are called microfarads and these ratings down here are what they're talking about so you should have 70 microfarads between the common terminal which is this one and the Hermetic or Herm terminal which is this one over here and you should have around five microfarads between the common terminal and then the fan terminal that is in here on the back and and then measuring those the numbers can be within six percent plus or minus in order for them to still come out as normal and of course before I start working on this I want to make sure that my power is off and then after I've confirmed that the power is off I want to make sure that my capacitor is completely discharged now this should happen naturally but there is the very very rare instance where a capacitor May hold on to a slight charge this way to check that and discharge it is to take a screwdriver make sure you're holding on to the insulated portion of the screwdriver and then take the metal portion and connect it between two of the terminals I like to go common to Herm and then common to fan and I just jump between those two a couple of times just to make sure that the capacitor is completely discharged and then from there I can remove my wiring and start doing my testing to make sure that my levels are at the proper levels or within that plus or minus six percent allowance then after I check my levels and if everything checks out I just reconnect all my wire years but if my numbers are outside of and especially if they're far outside of the plus or minus six percent then that's what I'm going to need to replace this run capacitor and it's really not too difficult to do it's literally a couple of screws and then replacing all the wires where they are supposed to go and then once all my wires are hooked back up to the new capacitor then everything should be good to go but because this video goes over so many different things this is a very simplified version as far as how to diagnose this and also how to then replace it so if you'd like to learn more about this issue and some of the positive outcomes that come from replacing this then I'll post a link to that video right over here that you can click on that will take you directly to it if not or if you've already seen it I'll post a link to a video right down here that goes over how I deep clean my unit like the pros do so I hope that you found this video to be helpful if you did if you could do me a huge favor hit that thumbs up button right down below and of course you have any questions or comments still you can leave those down in the comment section and I'll catch you all in the next one see

Channel: How To Home

Views: 2,096,057

Keywords: AC repair, air conditioner repair, AC won't turn on, AC capacitor, AC Contactor, How to clean an AC unit, how to fix an ac unit, How to unplug an AC condensation line, AC condensation line plugged, AC air fiter, Air conditioner

Id: AQQH9QwC46A

Length: 12min 40sec (760 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 29 2023