Problematic Air Conditioner

Today at 5:15 AM marks the third issue I’ve had with this AC this year (well also technically November of last year)!

Before I start, here’s some background: in 2007 before my brother was born (May 9th) we put on an addition put on to make two more bedrooms and a bathroom so we could keep the extra bedroom in my house, and me and my brother didn’t have to share a room. It was cheaper to install a whole new AC unit upstairs I. The attic instead of making the downstairs one larger and expanding the 50-year old ductwork.

But let’s go back to the start of the issues, November 1/2/3/4 2017, heat never kicks on temperature in the 50s with the thermostat set to 68 heat. FireAlarmTech9 on Instagram: "So I am about to walk to my bus stop, and I'm freezing so I look at the thermostat and I see this. POS Thermostat"

November 5, We have someone come out and check, we discover that the thermostat died, and was no longer able to flip on it’s relays, we replaced it with: FireAlarmTech9 on Instagram: "The inaccurate #thermostat has been replaced!" and FireAlarmTech9 on Instagram: "Not to spam post but I'm so happy XD"

April 10th, first hot weekend day of the year. The temperature hit 84 degrees inside. Our first response was to toggle the thermostat, no luck, we then decided to check the compressor, it wasn’t turning on. The outdoor compressor’s fan wasn’t spinning up and it was over-heating (like me). Two days later the same AC company comes out and fixes it, there was a bad capacitor keeping the fan from turning on.

Problem solved!

Today (May 2nd 2017 4:50 AM) I was woken up by a slight dripping sound, ignored it thinking it could be raining.

5:10 AM, I shine my phones flashlight around the room looking for the dripping, see a slight wet spot in the carpet, ignores it, something must of spilled.

5:15 AM, I get sick of the sound and decide to really investigate, gets up and turns on the big light in my room, I saw a swelling spot on the celiling


It drips and I rush down to get my dad up, show him it and we go up in the attic, I had a feeling it had something to do with the AC due to the location but we didn’t know yet. My dad saw it first, the pan that held the condentdation that should be being pushed out the side of its house through a pipe under its own weight wasn’t doing that and had overflowed, made its way across the floor to the first seam which lines up with the leak in my room. We attempted to clear the pipe with compressed air, some shot outside the house, but it didn’t clear the pipe enough for it to start clearing out. The AC is shut off again and the high for today is…72 I actually just had to check that I didn’t know when writing it, so not that bad but it will still be hot upstairs today.

Also with PARCC (I live in NJ where they have a contract w/Pearson forcing them to continue giving it) Testing I’ve had a ton of HW and tests , but now that it’s started I have a lot of free time after school.

We have AIR testing in my state. It’s really hard. I used to live in a state where state tests were really easy, so it was hard adjusting to the tricky sort of word choice they use when asking a question. I did really good on them last year though, so I’m not real worried about it now.

We had a problematic air conditioner in one of the computer labs at my school, and during my school newspaper class it dripped all over a computer and everywhere…big mess. Someone just dried the computer off with paper towels and stuck a trash can under the air conditioner to catch the water. Luckily the computer was not damaged. It’s a portable air conditioner as the better part of my school has no air conditioning; being built in the 50’s and added on in the 60’s up to the 90’s so only the newer parts have AC. It’s pretty miserable in the old part of the school in the summer…most teachers just keep a fan in the room to account for the nonexistent air conditioning.

I would suggest getting condensate float switches for your units. They’re relatively cheap and easy to install. Basically has a N/C relay and installed in your drain. If the water level backs up, the relay opens thus killing the unit.

Guess what’s broken again!

This air conditioner! The other one in my house is fine, and yet this one has issues at least once a month.

I came Home from school today and went upstairs to my room, feeling a bit warm so I went to check the thermostat and guess what I get…

It’s completely off, this thermostat isn’t battery powered, the power comes right from the unit, so it can’t be dead batteries, when my dad gets home well head up into the attic to find out what’s up now.

Here we go again.

Ugh noooo!!! I’m so sorry!! Worst case is you will have to replace EVERYTHING and that will be a pain in the-----neck

So did you ever figure out what the problem was THIS time?

Have you contacted any HVAC company to resolve this problem? I think they can easily help you to fix the problem having with your air conditioner. My friend also has the same issue and he’s contacted HVAC Houston to fix the problem.