Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Mystery capacitor bug?

Forgive me for not being well-versed in HVAC problems, but here's what I know. My A/C started blowing hot air instead of cold one day. Upon investigation (with some help from YouTube) I found the following:

  • The outdoor unit turns on and makes noise, but the fan doesn't run.

  • Hot line is too hot to touch, cold line is ambient temp.

  • If I turn on the A/C and go poke the fan with a stick it will spin right up and the unit will work just fine. Hot line will be warm, not hot, cold line will be cool/wet. This will not always work if I forget to turn the climate control function off and the A/C runs for a while without me poking the fan to turn it on.

  • All of this makes me think the problem is in the capacitor, so I changed it and the fan spun right up. Problem solved! ...Except that four hours later the same problem began occurring with the new capacitor.

  • My first guess is that I hooked something up improperly, but I double-checked my work the first time and didn't see anything wrong. In the meantime is there something else that could cause this problem?

submitted by /u/CharlesDickensABox
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