New answers tagged hvac
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I have not seen a condensate pump hooked up to the RC wire this looks wrong , the pump should have a level or float sensor and should function with the air handler not running or the thermostat not calling for cooling. The reason I say this is after a cooling cycle in some cases their will be a large amount of water dripping from the evaporator coil so the ...
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Your best bet is to find the closest interior drain and tie into it. I had a similar problem (not a leak--but rather freezing condensate line). I ran a new condensate line through an HVAC cold-air return chase through 2 stories and into my basement floor drain. The job was surprisingly simple and easy to do. (If you don't have a cold-air return chase, it may ...
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Haven't you ever wondered why relative humidity is a thing? Why don't they just give water content as grams of water per gram of air? Because warm air holds more water than cool air.
For instance your 95F 10%RH air, when simply cooled to 70F, now is 24% relative humidity even though it has the exact same amount of water. I bet you didn't realize that, or ...
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Hygrometers aren't super accurate +-5% is easily within tolerance on the cheaper ones.
So you go from 75F / RH 33% to 76F / RH 40% and you wonder where the 7% came from?
A pair of dogs could definitely add 7% RH in 4 hours. Hell if you stand near a hygrometer in a house you can increase the reading with the moisture emitted by your body.
Water can come up ...
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I saw a question VERY similar to this answered on This Old House. Here is the
link to the video that explained why it happened and how to fix it. Hope it helps.
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I assume you have forced air heating & cooling.
If not this is very simple with baseboard 220v heat. Add a heater or more on a different 220v circuit, connected to a thermostat.
Forced Air, isn't hard, but probably expensive. You will have to isolate the runs to that particular area. Add a flow switching device, that also activates the end device, ...
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Or do AC units really make the processed air more... "artificial"?
They make the air more dry.
Air contains water vapor. Warm air is able to hold more water vapor than cold air. The air conditioning equipment chills the air quite cold, as low as 5 degrees C, and air that cold can hold very little water. So the water falls right out of the air. ...
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Generally, (newer) buildings are well sealed - this is very good because it limits air leaks and means your heating and cooling bills are lower. However, it also means that you have to have a method for intentionally exchanging inside air with outside air.
The air inside will get stale as it is breathed by anyone who is inside. It will pick up odors from ...
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AC air or air that is recycled from the living space run over a set of coils that are cold, just like a glass of ice water in the room collects the moisture in the air collects on the cooling coil , this makes less humid and may be why you feel the difference.
I had a customer a few years back that was so irritated by this I did some research and found that ...
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A typical (I am sure there are exceptions for various extreme situations - perhaps clean rooms, hospital operating rooms, extreme environmental situations, space station (ISS), etc. - though it may turn out that nearly all (except ISS) are really just "regular air conditioning with higher power and/or more filtering") does the following:
Use some method of ...
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That looks good to me, the second "C" terminal connects to the chassis in the background of the photo so it most likely is equivalent to the screw-down terminal.
fitting a crimp-on fork lug to the wire would be another alternative if you really want to connect to the screw-down terminal.
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I think you've already figured out that older units often didn't run the C wire. Power from 'R' was switched to 'G' (fan) and/or 'W' (heat) by a simple switch in the thermostat. The older thermostats needed no power, so there wan't any point in running the common wire 'C'.
Older "smart" thermostats worked off the difference between 'R' and 'W' when the ...
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Fine dust particles can slip through the filter and cake up on the coil which is constantly creating moisture.
Once it is clogged the air flow will be diminished and because of that the air that gets through will be very cold. Eventually it will ice up and burn your fan motor out.
There are specific steps that need to be followed to clean the coil safely ...
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When pumps fail, sometimes it's from the lack of a check valve/back flow preventer which depending on the drain pipe can overwork the pump's duty cycle rating.
Verify that when the pump shuts off, that no water flows back into the reservoir. If it does, then the pump has to repump the same water multiple times.
The fix is to change the drain pipe slope, ...
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There are different profiles of duct available. In height restricted areas you can switch to a rectangular flat profile which might give you the ability to better insulate.
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There is a big range in quality for condensate pumps.
Condensate is actually hard on pumps and most of them are plastic, plastic seals impeller sometimes even bearing surfaces and case.
The more expensive ones have rubber seals or ceramic and better level switches , many of the plastic ones I have found that are bad were because the shaft seals melted (...
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First the heater needs air flow prior to turning on the heat. If the blower is working then the contactor pulls in and energizes the heating coils. Since it is tripping the breaker at this point I would be looking for a broken nichrome wire in the heating element that is touching some metal or shorting to ground. Many times a visual inspection can find the ...
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A heat pump is an air conditioner that has valves that switch the flow of the Freon so in the winter the condensing could is the inside making heat inside and cool outside (trying to make a simple explanation).
So if the compressor is 2 stage it can run at 2 different levels, depending on brand the compressor doesn’t know if it is heating or cooling the home,...
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Two-stage cooling is available with some models. A two-stage compressor probably doesn't guarantee two-stage cooling due to dependency on other components of the system.
Page 7 of the manual you linked indicates "High Cool" and "Low Cool". This would seem to imply that it does in fact offer two-stage cooling. I admit that I have not drilled into the various ...
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Heat pumps don't easily drop humidity below 40% rh. In my experience living in a humid area, it's more like 55%. Swamp coolers put out air around 95% rh, much higher than typical outdoor humidity even in humid areas. So while the air may indeed be even cooler, your sweat won't evaporate as well (same as if you were outdoors), and so you would feel hotter ...
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I think your best bet is two-fold. You can insulate against the temperature delta between the spaces. I strongly recommend spray foam. It will provide a airtight and high R-value insulation layer. You may need to sightly adjust some things in the attic to do it properly but foam is "best in class" for this.
The second is reducing the temperature delta ...
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I've never lived in a climate like yours, so I probably am not the best person to give advice for you, but:
If you do #4, I'd recommend you box it in with plywood and 2*4s. But unless your AC is spitting warm air into the room, this is probably not necessary.
A radiant barrier between the rafters to reduce the heat in the attic may help, especially if you ...
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Yeah, your control board is shot
I'd replace the control board if I was in your shoes; the behavior you are seeing is a sign that the relays on the board that control the blower motor are failing, or something is causing it to drive them uncommandedly for that matter.
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Check the relay for the blower in the air handler. It could be sticking due to pitted contacts from over currents from the motor not starting when the caps failed. Also, check the thermostat fan on/auto circuit. Good luck.
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