Second Title:
Did John Wayne Air Conditioning Deliberately Fuck-Up my A/C Unit's Contactor's Wiring in Order to Sell me a New System?
I'm framing this in the theoretical right now because I haven't got the pictures handy, but I have a "before" and an "after" that I can't get to right now, but I DO have time to post so I'm making the most of what I have right now, which is time to post not time to dig around trying to upload photos. The answer may not require them, however if it does I can post them later today, tonight, tomorrow.
I did Home Depot's spring A/C "Tune-Up" thing, and they sent a (former Marine) Salesman er, I mean "Tech" out to the house for $40, which was primarily intended to be the cost of the 3+ cans of coil cleaning solution that costs $6.50 a can and I usually use 4 of them, so that was in my heart at the time I made the appointment. And also my full knowledge that we were never going to be talked into a $2,500 system while the old one is still wobbling around on it's last legs. I KNOW the outside unit's fan's bearings is going out, failure imminent, etc... it's been making that horrible noise for the last 3 years or more. It might continue to make that noise for another 3 years, and the bearings are non-replaceable, the fan is 20+ years old (no replacement assemblies or end-items either).
So if the girl with the big Ba-ZOOMS wants to have a Tech come out to my house and drop 4 X $6.50 ($26.00) in coil cleaner in my outside unit for $40, and have me ask a few questions about whether or not preventatively replacing the various, large, $10.00 (on eBay) "start-up" capacitors (there are three, I learned), then why not. Besides that, I was out-numbered 4:1, and was outvoted by a large (75%) majority.
Well the former Marine Sales -er I mean Service Technician was kind of pissy when I told him right up front that he was there to teach me everything I need to know in order to do all the work myself, and I was going to follow him around, ask questions, take notes, second-guess why something was condemned as "bad" and/or determined to be "good". Voltages, resistance, current draw, tolerances, and whether or not any of it would affect efficiency (as measured by this summer's electric bills), etc...
I'm so nice. I'm SO nice. When he says "You aren't going to make me clean the outside unit's coils, are you?" and given the piteous tone of this poor, former Marine's face, I decided that in honor of all the brave men that died on faraway beaches like Tarawa and Okinawa and Iwo Jima and in places like A Shau valley, I decided that he'd been through enough (poor, tubby thing) and so I let him off the hook.
Real Reason: Why "make" an uncooperative and reluctant workman do a half-assed job when you are going to do it yourself (and right) anyways?
So, I gave myself permission to be a real pain in the ass, and asked a lot of really hard questions like "How does he know what that particular compressor's pressures are supposed to be." which was then followed-up with the long story titled "Two Years Ago", which details the long day 3 different crews of A/C Repairman spent looking at and wondering about our system until the Really Old Man That Knew Everything showed up and illuminated the fact that our house had been in a fire (before we moved in) and they replaced the inside unit but not the outside unit, so if you look up in a manual for the pressures of the inside unit, they will be wrong for the outside unit to work. And if you looked up the pressures for the outside unit, the inside unit would not work.
And so, The Really Old Man That Knew Everything (ancient, almost 50) said that the solution to the whole, head-scratching situation was to effect a "compromise" of pressures so that certain pressures would be neither too high or too low for either the inside or outside units.
Which, after some brief directions, the compliant "Young Men That Only Knew Certain Things" then implemented, and the A/C has run just fine ever since, which was (title) Two Years Ago.
With the underlying message of "don't fuck with it, or you'll break it and be very,very sorry". And he didn't.
So, he leaves and a week later I decide it's time to change the Contactor, because the contacts are burned and sometimes it makes a buzzing, arcing sound. And ever since that time, the outside unit's fan stays constantly on, and will only turn off when I pull the fuse to the whole unit.
It's a single pole contactor, which I think means that one side is "always felt" and the other side is switched. I've figured-out which are the 24 volt DC lines, and which are the 110 VAC compressor and outside unit fan lines.
When the (new) Contactor operates, the compressor gets it's 110 VAC like it is supposed to, but the fan does not. It's wired to the "always felt" side of the Contactor. I think I should simply move it to the "switched" side, but don't want to blow it all up.
But the main question is how this happened? I took a picture "before" and it's wired "after" exactly the same, if my understanding of how the Contactor is arranged (left is "always felt" and right is "switched"). My new Contactor looks very different, but it's single pole, and the wiring is electrically the same. I took a multimeter and measured opens & shorts and then voltages, so I am certain my understanding of where 24 VDC and 110VAC is (and is not), and also which electrical points are always short (left side, front to back) and which are switched (right side, front to back). I even mechanically operated the switch to prove that certain points were always short, no matter what the contactor (switch) did, and that certain points where short when the switch was closed (but they were NOT short to the "always felt" (left) side.
If you followed that, then I have either proved I understand the thing, or demonstrated that I don't know. I'm curious as to which.
Assuming that I understand it, and have wired it all as a duplicate (which doesn't work) instead of how I think it should be (which SHOULD work), I want to know either why the old Contactor is different, or how it got wired wrong. The old one is off now, so I can't replicate it's previous state, but if the old Contactor was wired wrong BEFORE the former Marine AC Repair er- I mean Service Technician got there, then the fan would have run 24/7 all day long and every day, which it did NOT. Or, somehow I managed to mix up the wires myself before I took the photo (possible, I have ADHD like a mofo), or SNM ("Said Named Marine") did something tricky and funky with my wiring as a final, parting shot across the bow ("Buy our overpriced AC units or ELSE!"). I just think of all those dead Marines, laying there and wondering why they were so stupid as to die on some beach somewhere, so that this guy could rookie-do my wiring in order to make me have to spend money on something I really don't need.
And, in case you haven't figured it out, I also served, so the whole "honor" issue is of great concern to me.
Did John Wayne Air Conditioning Deliberately Fuck-Up my A/C Unit's Contactor's Wiring in Order to Sell me a New System?
I'm framing this in the theoretical right now because I haven't got the pictures handy, but I have a "before" and an "after" that I can't get to right now, but I DO have time to post so I'm making the most of what I have right now, which is time to post not time to dig around trying to upload photos. The answer may not require them, however if it does I can post them later today, tonight, tomorrow.
I did Home Depot's spring A/C "Tune-Up" thing, and they sent a (former Marine) Salesman er, I mean "Tech" out to the house for $40, which was primarily intended to be the cost of the 3+ cans of coil cleaning solution that costs $6.50 a can and I usually use 4 of them, so that was in my heart at the time I made the appointment. And also my full knowledge that we were never going to be talked into a $2,500 system while the old one is still wobbling around on it's last legs. I KNOW the outside unit's fan's bearings is going out, failure imminent, etc... it's been making that horrible noise for the last 3 years or more. It might continue to make that noise for another 3 years, and the bearings are non-replaceable, the fan is 20+ years old (no replacement assemblies or end-items either).
So if the girl with the big Ba-ZOOMS wants to have a Tech come out to my house and drop 4 X $6.50 ($26.00) in coil cleaner in my outside unit for $40, and have me ask a few questions about whether or not preventatively replacing the various, large, $10.00 (on eBay) "start-up" capacitors (there are three, I learned), then why not. Besides that, I was out-numbered 4:1, and was outvoted by a large (75%) majority.
Well the former Marine Sales -er I mean Service Technician was kind of pissy when I told him right up front that he was there to teach me everything I need to know in order to do all the work myself, and I was going to follow him around, ask questions, take notes, second-guess why something was condemned as "bad" and/or determined to be "good". Voltages, resistance, current draw, tolerances, and whether or not any of it would affect efficiency (as measured by this summer's electric bills), etc...
I'm so nice. I'm SO nice. When he says "You aren't going to make me clean the outside unit's coils, are you?" and given the piteous tone of this poor, former Marine's face, I decided that in honor of all the brave men that died on faraway beaches like Tarawa and Okinawa and Iwo Jima and in places like A Shau valley, I decided that he'd been through enough (poor, tubby thing) and so I let him off the hook.
Real Reason: Why "make" an uncooperative and reluctant workman do a half-assed job when you are going to do it yourself (and right) anyways?
So, I gave myself permission to be a real pain in the ass, and asked a lot of really hard questions like "How does he know what that particular compressor's pressures are supposed to be." which was then followed-up with the long story titled "Two Years Ago", which details the long day 3 different crews of A/C Repairman spent looking at and wondering about our system until the Really Old Man That Knew Everything showed up and illuminated the fact that our house had been in a fire (before we moved in) and they replaced the inside unit but not the outside unit, so if you look up in a manual for the pressures of the inside unit, they will be wrong for the outside unit to work. And if you looked up the pressures for the outside unit, the inside unit would not work.
And so, The Really Old Man That Knew Everything (ancient, almost 50) said that the solution to the whole, head-scratching situation was to effect a "compromise" of pressures so that certain pressures would be neither too high or too low for either the inside or outside units.
Which, after some brief directions, the compliant "Young Men That Only Knew Certain Things" then implemented, and the A/C has run just fine ever since, which was (title) Two Years Ago.
With the underlying message of "don't fuck with it, or you'll break it and be very,very sorry". And he didn't.
So, he leaves and a week later I decide it's time to change the Contactor, because the contacts are burned and sometimes it makes a buzzing, arcing sound. And ever since that time, the outside unit's fan stays constantly on, and will only turn off when I pull the fuse to the whole unit.
It's a single pole contactor, which I think means that one side is "always felt" and the other side is switched. I've figured-out which are the 24 volt DC lines, and which are the 110 VAC compressor and outside unit fan lines.
When the (new) Contactor operates, the compressor gets it's 110 VAC like it is supposed to, but the fan does not. It's wired to the "always felt" side of the Contactor. I think I should simply move it to the "switched" side, but don't want to blow it all up.
But the main question is how this happened? I took a picture "before" and it's wired "after" exactly the same, if my understanding of how the Contactor is arranged (left is "always felt" and right is "switched"). My new Contactor looks very different, but it's single pole, and the wiring is electrically the same. I took a multimeter and measured opens & shorts and then voltages, so I am certain my understanding of where 24 VDC and 110VAC is (and is not), and also which electrical points are always short (left side, front to back) and which are switched (right side, front to back). I even mechanically operated the switch to prove that certain points were always short, no matter what the contactor (switch) did, and that certain points where short when the switch was closed (but they were NOT short to the "always felt" (left) side.
If you followed that, then I have either proved I understand the thing, or demonstrated that I don't know. I'm curious as to which.
Assuming that I understand it, and have wired it all as a duplicate (which doesn't work) instead of how I think it should be (which SHOULD work), I want to know either why the old Contactor is different, or how it got wired wrong. The old one is off now, so I can't replicate it's previous state, but if the old Contactor was wired wrong BEFORE the former Marine AC Repair er- I mean Service Technician got there, then the fan would have run 24/7 all day long and every day, which it did NOT. Or, somehow I managed to mix up the wires myself before I took the photo (possible, I have ADHD like a mofo), or SNM ("Said Named Marine") did something tricky and funky with my wiring as a final, parting shot across the bow ("Buy our overpriced AC units or ELSE!"). I just think of all those dead Marines, laying there and wondering why they were so stupid as to die on some beach somewhere, so that this guy could rookie-do my wiring in order to make me have to spend money on something I really don't need.
And, in case you haven't figured it out, I also served, so the whole "honor" issue is of great concern to me.
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