You see, the A/C unit at the house had it's scheduled maintenance. The company that maintains it said that it needed a few things. First on unit #2, the dual capacitor was weak, and eventually it would need a new one. The second issue with unit #2 was that the squirrel cage blower wheel needed cleaning.
Well, after everything I've seen I wasn't sure how true it was. I know a lot of companies perform the "inspection" for free, and then jack up the price on needed work. What defines "needed work" can be open to interpretation. Usually a capacitor either works or it doesn't. There is no in-between. Now I will be honest, in that, if a capacitor is weak it may be a sign of dying ...... sometime. It could be a week, it could be years. What you don't want is a capacitor to quit working, and then need an "emergency call" to the A/C company. Then the price will really be jacked up.
So I wanted to get ahead of the curve. I took a peek at the estimates for the work. To change the capacitor was $194.24 (before discount,) and cleaning the blower was $256.10 (before discount.) So if I could take care of this instead of the A/C company it would save a lot of dough.
My instructor was able to purchase the capacitor for $9.40. I immediately paid him for it in cash, and was ever so thankful. So when I made it home I got all my equipment and tools out.
I took lots of pictures, so I will tell the rest of the story along with the pictures I took. That way, you can understand what I am talking about.
First up, the tools.
And here is the $70, nay, $9.40 capacitor.
Here is the unit.
Here are the guts of the unit.
Here is a close up of the old capacitor.
I made sure to perform the correct math to make sure all the wires were going in the right places on the new capacitor.
So I put the connections on the new capacitor, and then drilled a new hole on the strap. This capacitor was skinner, but longer than the old one. So I adjusted the strap to hold it nice and tight.
And here is a picture of the all the completed work.
Honestly, I spent most of my time performing math and adjust the strap. Other than that it didn't really take long. So that was now out of the way.
A few days later it was time to tackle the squirrel cage blower. Again, any little bit of dust on it can result in an A/C company saying it needs cleaning. So before I even took anything apart, I took a peek at it. You know what. They weren't lying. It needed cleaning. It needed cleaning badly. So I took it out and this is what it looked like.
There's nothing too technical about it. It's just dirty, and I needed to get in there by hand and clean it out. I used wire brushes, my big flat head screwdriver, and an air compressor to get in, and get that thing clean. Did I mention it was dirty? Because I looked like I rolled around in black dirt.
Again, it was more time consuming than it was hard. I will say this. My instructor showed me how to clean a blower just two days before. I also knew that I would have needed a special tool to take the motor out. If I could have removed the motor, then I would have used a water hose on the blower. But since the motor was intact, I knew not to get water anywhere near it.
Using the compressed air really helped. I was able to get the little bits (and big bits) out of the blower. I was surprised at the amount of dirt I was able to get out of it. I ended up with a big ole' pile at my feet. So this is what it looked like after cleaning.
Not perfect, but still ten times better than it was. Once the unit was re-installed it actually sounded quieter. That let me know that all the work I preformed was valid. And hey, no one had to pay $450 (before discounts) to the A/C company.
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