My house has two air conditioners. This is because it has an addition that was built about 6 years ago (It’s a one story house.) The second AC is bigger than the first, and the two thermostats are not very far apart from each other. This makes things complicated because if you turn one AC up, the other AC shuts off from the cold air of the first AC and one side of the house gets warm from adjusting the opposite thermostat! (When we moved in, I didn’t have a clue about this, and it took me a while to figure out what was happening.)
Anyway, recently, one side of the house started getting warmer. It was annoying, but I figured I just hadn’t set the two thermostats correctly. This situation kept getting worse, and I had to finally conclude that the old AC was giving up the ghost. So I called an AC man.
He came out a started taking wires off and hemming and hawing. He went to the outside unit and took it apart and took a sledge hammer and started tapping the compressor with his ear up to it. “This doesn’t look good”, he says. “I’ll try one more thing” he says. He then takes out a humongous capacitor and hooks it into the circuit and turns the system on.
“Well,” he concludes. “It looks like you need a new compressor. But if I were you, I would change out the whole unit, because the fan’s not far off either.” “How much?”, Says I. “Oh about 1200 for a compressor or 2400 for a completely new unit.”
He had me hook line and sinker, and I was fixing to say OK, but I remembered something. I just renewed my home warranty and it covers any problems with the AC. If I had remembered this before, I wouldn’t have even called this guy. In any event, I told the guy that since it’s so expensive, I was going to have to use them instead. So he puts everything back together and leaves. $70.
The home warranty people just sent over a guy yesterday. He added coolant to the old system and it is now pumping out cold air like there is no tomorrow. Morale: Watch Your Ass with AC Men. I wonder how these people can live with themselves.
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