Can't work on AC in the rain?!?!

I have 2 Trane units that are not working right. Called the local Trane high end dealer about a week ago and made an appointment. I work about an hour away from home so took the day off today to meet them. Got a call from them this morning saying they could not come today due to the cool/rainy conditions. Huh?! It has been 80 degrees the last few days and did turn to drizzle and 40/50 degrees today but...

Is it true you can't work on a heat pump when it is a little rainy?!?! Should I find another dealer?

Reply to
Telehow
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You should use a little common sense.... Do you want to be sticking your hands in a place where there is LIVE 240 VOLTS when your standing on wet ground in the rain?? The 40/50 degrees is not an issue for a heat pump, but it is for straight air conditioning unless it has head pressure controls added to it (usually on commercial equipment)and if there is enough heat load in the conditioned spaces.

Reply to
Noon-Air

I appreciate the comments. "Common sense" would tell me that anyone who works with live 240 in any condition isn't too smart. Isn't that one use of breakers and VOM's?

Anway - good to know there may be reasons they can't do it. My suspicion though is that one big reason is that it is Friday. It is only drizzling on and off. Both air handlers that need to be cleaned are indoors (attic and crawl space) of course.

I guess their decision was whether or not to send all the workers home if there isn't enough billable work.

It is unknown if they would need to open any units.

Reply to
Telehow

Sorry, I don't work in the rain either... unless, it's an emergency.

The real question would be, does he needs to open up the sealed system? As equipment manufactures of R410 systems don't recommend it, during rainy or extremely high humidity conditions.

Reply to
<kjpro

Its unknown if the mechanic has to open the hood on my car to work on the engine.

Reply to
Noon-Air

Noon-air

Are you a jerk by choice? Jeez.

Maybe I&#39;m missing something. Maybe you have the ability to sit around on a Friday and diagnose problems by telepathy and think of sarcastic answers. Maybe you just do it for fun. Maybe you have nothing else to do. Either way - I&#39;m not going to waste any more of my time responding to you.

Obviously I was giving the contractor the benefit of the doubt. I took their answer and decided to try and find out for myself if it was reasonable. I don&#39;t work on HVAC systems - hence my original question. I never threw them under the bus or said anything negative about them.

If you are in the HVAC business, which it seems you are based on your comments, have you had issues with your customers on rainy days? If you have I guess I could understand your provoking remarks. If not I guess you may just have self respect issues with trying to make others look less smart so you will feel more smart.

Regardless you must understand that in an open forum with typed messages it is often hard to gauge the "feeling" of posts. That is why you must use "common sense" and read your own responses to understand whether your post will be construed as funny, informative, obnoxious, sarcastic, etc.

Anyway - I h>

Reply to
Telehow

k...@usenet

Good point and you are right. Thanks for the comments. Evidently I came across a sticky subject somehow. I was just trying to understand the rationale for not working in the rain. While I agree with all your comments I still can&#39;t help but feel, in my opinion, they could have still cleaned the inside units, diagnosed what they could etc. Their office is 3 minutes from my house. I&#39;m sure the guys working there have a need for a full paycheck. Maybe they should have given a choice.. pay more for 2 trips or wait.

Anyway, thanks for the comments and for your time.

Reply to
Telehow

If your were giving the contractor the benifit of the doubt, then why are you posting here??

Actually, we have been having rain here, and today is too cold to do anything except for heat pumps and gas furnaces. As far as my time spent on here this morning, I am waiting on the delivery truck with a replacement coil for another customer.

When you ask somebody a stoopid question, you gotta expect a like answer. I can&#39;t see what you got or where you are. You would have gotten just as much with as little information had you called a random number out of the phone book.

My day was going just fine until you go trying to second guess your contractor and make it sound like he/she is a slacker. If you had a problem with it, maybe you should have asked them???

Reply to
Noon-Air

It could be that they are actually looking out for you best interest.

That said, one trip, one complete service, saves you money.

Since the indoor units need cleaned, the outside units probably need cleaned to... no one likes to work in the rain and risk getting sick or hurt. It&#39;s just not worth it.

Reply to
<kjpro

They wouldn&#39;t have likely ask that... I don&#39;t know ANY client that would like to pay more for two trips. (and I don&#39;t care if it&#39;s 2 miles from your house... that doesn&#39;t make up for a lot of extra wasted time)

Reply to
<kjpro

Reply to
Bubba

Funny story... OT to the post but in the same genre.....

I have a customer that has a 6.5 megawatt induction furnace for melting steel.

Two nights ago, during a furious rainstorm, a part of their roof failed that happened to be directly above the power unit for this furnace.

The roof is less than 10 years old and developed a serious leak around a exhaust fan. The roof drains were plugged.

Anyhow... the power unit for an induction furnace this big is essentially a huge &#39;variable frequency drive&#39;. Its capacitor bank is 16 feet long and 8 feet wide. The inverter section is another 8 feet long, has 24 platter size SCR&#39;s in it, and various control components.

I got a call-out that the Inverter buss was alarming on the - (minus) side. That&#39;s all they told me. When I get there.... a steady stream of water is cascading from the roof onto the power unit... directly above the inverter section. No-one had turned the power off. The operator told me he tried to &#39;reset&#39; the unit multiple times but "it just went BOOM BOOM BOOM... like a shot gun".

I immediately opened the breakers, L/O&#39;d the unit and told them to fix the roof before I could do anything. They had to &#39;dump&#39; the furnace and get rid of 20 tons of steel at 2520 degrees. That was a spectacle in itself.

The first call was around midnight. It was 6 in the morning before the roof was fixed, the water stopped falling, the furnace &#39;dumped&#39; and we had dried things out a bit.

Our crew of 7 worked 18 hours on this project. Every SCR assembly had to be dismantled and dried. 11 SCR&#39;s at $1,200 a piece had to be replaced. Two tank capacitors.. big fellas... water-cooled jobs.. were blown to bits... $6k there.

The entire bill was $87,260. Because no-one turned the power off when electrical components are exposed to water.

Water and electricity don&#39;t mix. To the OP, be glad your contractor wouldn&#39;t come out. They were protecting you and your equipment.

Jake

Reply to
Jake

Where I live, and with having that attitude then you&#39;d only find work maybe

3 mo outa the year.
Reply to
Jeffrey Lebowski

I&#39;m remembering a job I had a couple years ago. The upper middle class lady noticed the AC wasn&#39;t blowing. She came downstairs and found the breaker for the furnace off. Single pole, 15 amp. She reset it, repeatedly, until the breaker stayed on.

What happened was the fan blower motor shorted. Five year old furnace, a Bryant. Every time she turned the breaker back on, it shorted through the motor. Finally a couple relays on the circuit board vaporized, and that needed to be replaced, also.

I don&#39;t remember the numbers, but the parts really added up. Plus the house call and three hours of labor.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Reply to
Bennett Price

Here in the PNW if you don&#39;t work in the rain then you don&#39;t work. Just make a temporary canopy over the outdoor equipment. The phone company guys do it all the time.

The guys that I admire are the roofers. They don&#39;t stop in any weather. I see them prancing around in the rain on 45 degree 3 story roofs like it&#39;s no big deal. They often don&#39;t even have safety harnesses. Nothing seems to stop these guys.

Reply to
Bud

Are you aware that you&#39;re NOT supposed to lay shingles in the rain?????????

The underlayment is SUPPOSED to be dry!!!!!!!!

Reply to
<kjpro

Uh.... A couple of major differences:

In the case of the electronic equipment in the environmental enclosures, the airflow is minimal, and changing or killing the airflow to prevent blowing away the canopy while the enclosure is open doesn&#39;t prevent the completion of the work.

Generally, the really hot shit - 120-240 volts - is pretty well out of reach of groping wet hands. There are points that you can touch in either the environmental enclosures, or the more common cross-connect cases that have voltages in the range of 48 to 190 volts DC, and also 90 volts AC at 20 hz, but the higher voltages are at really low current - span power (the 190 volt DC variety) will knock you on your ass, but it&#39;s limited to somewhere around

30 ma, so while it has the potential to stop your heart if you hold on to it long enough, there&#39;s not enough current available to lock your muscles. You WILL move if you touch it.

In NC you have to say it like this:

Hey, está lloviendo y hay relámpago. Es usted enterado que le no suponen poner ripias en el?????? de la lluvia El underlayment SE SUPONE para ser seco!!!!!!!!

Otherwise you just get a blank stare. The "word" INS seems to be understood pretty well without translation, though.

Reply to
Mo Hoaner

Aww...tar paper will dry out sooner nough--bigges issue is you want for the tabs to warm up good and seal down before any windstorms happen to come up....otherwise, the exposed portions will break off and fly away....

Reply to
Jeffrey Lebowski

during rainey peroids dont work on AC sysytems . Mositure in system oil can not be removeed . It will cause compresor to lock up soner or later. AC system will never cool right . The hoter the weather the worser it will cool. I learn the hard way.

Reply to
John A

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