A/C of August (problem solved)


We were in Florida last week, got home on Saturday, and walked into a very, very, very hot house. We knew while we were away that the temperatures had gone insane at home … but inside the house they shouldn’t have, we did leave the A/C on –in the mid-to-high-70’s — but it was so hot that the thermostat couldn’t register the temperature (it’s highest temperature showing on the dial is 90 F. It’s a mercury thermostat.)

Outside it was over 100 degrees f. and inside it felt hotter than that, fwiw.

The A/C just wasn’t working right, so similar to what it was like a few years ago when we had problems with it in another HOT August and eventually abandoned using it in September when I had bad allergies … we had turned it off in August, there was ice in the pipes and once it melted the system worked fine again … but I connected my allergies to the A/C system in September of that year, and when we turned it off my symptoms reduced massively

We didn’t have A/C the next year, and the year after that we got window units for the kitchen and master bedroom and then later a smaller one for the “basement” area. Those 2 and then 3 cooled sufficiently, while being fairly costly, but worth it. The year without A/C was tough, just the Summer, mind you. The next year, which was last year –2006 we used the window units again, but I was tired of using them, the noise being so high, and the blocking of light to much — so I turned the A/C Sytem on and it worked, and I wasn’t getting “ill” from it, so we stopped using the window units and that was fine.

This year, 2007 we have used the A/C fine until now, this heat wave is when it decided to stop working fine and to freeze up again.

We haven’t had it looked at by a professional ever, though we *should* but it’s just too much to consider paying for, as long as we can get it keep running as much as we need until something breaks entirely, or we have the funds to upgrade everything. The whole house can’t be A/C’d or Heated with the system, we have a 3-level house with one small system. Two major rooms downstairs are not even connected to it. Anyhow, we know we need to upgrade everything and will have to do that “when we can” whenever that is. So for now, it just has to work the way it is.

So in the case of the non-correctly-working-A/C recently, I was looking at it outside, and playing with the thermostat to turn it on and off and such, and it seemed that it was iced up somewhere but I never saw any ice, just more water than is normal to be coming down the pipe out there, and under the outside unit as well.

All evening it didn’t work right, just blase cool-ish air, but not A/C’d air really. DH and I decided to put the window unit in the kitchen earlier, just because it was so hot, so very hot and we had to get the house cooler.

Also, earlier I did know we needed to change the filter, and had known it for a couple of weeks. It gets dirty fairly fast in our house. It’s just a matter of buying new one and someone climbing up to the ceiling in the hallway to get out the old one and put in the new one (not horrible, but bad enough and can barely be done by me, and easier done by my DH, but our 11 year old is too small to do it still.) When DH finally got a filter that very day we returned, he took the old one out, and the date I had written on it was May 31. Whoops! We really need to change them out at 1 month — no wonder it was so dirty.

Having a baby threw everything like that for a loop. :blushing:

So the majority of the time I was fussing with the system, there was a new filter in. The window unit cooled the main floor of the house decently, but upstairs was still so very, very warm. The next day was Sunday, and I fooled with the system some more, with out it working to produce “cold” air … but then I thought it wasn’t as warm as it had been all day and had the system on that night, just to do the little it could … and during the night I had to pull the covers up on me, when I hadn’t used them at all due to the warmth in the house at bedtime … so later I got up and checked the thermostat and it was going down in temperature, yay! I went to the kitchen window unit and turned it off and went back to bed. In the morning it was nice in the kitchen still and pretty cold upstairs (upstairs is cold and the main floor just cool enough, traditionally with this system.)

Ever since then it runs nice and cold despite the raging temperatures and humidity outside, like yesterday it was 99 at one point with a “feels like” of 105 degrees. You’d never know it from inside the house.

So this time, the dirty filter had something to do with the system warm-up … maybe there is something else “wrong” that needs fixed, but for now it’s as cold as ever, and working. I’ll hopefully be sure to get that filter changed before it’s too far gone (dirty) this next time. By then the temperatures outside should be getting cooler, and it won’t be long before A/C can go off until Spring ramp-up of temperture and humidity. We still have hot temperatures to get through for the next few weeks, and beyond that still, but it’s most likely to be a lesser need for A/C and that is that.

Time flies — didn’t Summer just begin? Ah, it’s not over yet, but is going fast.

Baby Q is doing great, 7 weeks old, turning 8 weeks tomorrow. See, it is going fast! His birthday was just a few days after the official Summer Solstice. Speaking of Baby Q, I’m overdue in feeding him, so I’ve got to close this post. I’ll just post it, and post again later with the other things I was going to write about. That’s fine anyhow, as this post is LONG ENOUGH already! 🙂 It’s better to split up topics and put them into their own posts, after all. KWIM 😉


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