A/C working properly? Cost -> lower temp?

[Jeffrey Lebowski]

We'd put proly a min 15 on those here.

Actually maybe good fodder for a survey....

Lessee...

Here, we got's us yup a 5 ton trane heat pump lennox ahu having uhmm 90.1 amps @ 208

[Gordon]

Here are few things that need to be checked.

1)Outside coil should be hosed off at least once a year. If you have access to a hose bib and a hoes you can do this yourself.

2) Air filter should be replaced monthly.

3) There may be a freon leak. Maintenance can top it off.

carie [e-mail] wrote in news:1183764250.640399.227540 @n2g2000hse.googlegroups.com:

Ask them what the problem was and what they did to fix it.

[Logan Shaw]

I've been through this. The thermostat was set at 75F, and the A/C would literally run all day and all night, and even just before dawn, the A/C would not have brought the temperature down low enough to shut off.

Apartment management came out and "fixed" it, the thing worked much better for a few weeks, then it was back how it was before.

It was an 834 sq. ft. apartment, and the electric bill was $260. My upstairs neighbor, who had an identical floor plan, never had a bill anywhere near that high.

This is as much a problem of dealing with the apartment management as it is a technical problem. As others have said, get a thermometer and measure the temperature difference between the air going in and coming out. If it can't manage 20F, it's broken. Make sure they know that. And on an issue like this, never make a maintenance request or follow-up without putting it in writing. This can be a form of their that you fill out, or it can be a quick letter that you type up. When they have a paper trail, it's much harder to "forget" about things that require work. (Apartment management companies eat, sleep, and breathe paperwork. They are constantly doing huge reports on everything and printing it all out to send to the regional office.) If they get uncooperative, send the requests by certified mail. Of course, be civil.

One final comment: it sounds like your electric bills are about double what they should be. If the apartment management denies the existence of a problem, it might be worthwhile to get your own guy to come out and look at it and tell you what kind of shape it's in. Even if this costs you $100, it'll be worth it if it results in action because you are throwing away more than that much in needless electric usage every month.

- Logan

[Jeffrey Lebowski]

Yeah that's something usually written right into your contract.

Now, define outragous.

You f****ng slut.

[Jeffrey Lebowski]

Bingo...

[<kjpro]

Why not find and repair the leak?

[Jeffrey Lebowski]

And exactly when did the group vote to give google the authority to define some rigid description ?

So post your drivel in sci.engr.heat-vent-ac...

( You f****ng bitch)

Nope.

Pretty much every regular from that particular group has told you to go and shove it sideways up your your f****ng ass.

Oh please...go on and tell me all about relevant groups.

( stupid cunt )

Missed clue #1 then I see.....

NOBODY that seriously wants to discuss etiquette with any longterm usenet regulars would even consider posting their f****ng drivel from google&#39;s newsfeed.

Hopefully, someone responsible will take away your f****ng internet access very shortly.

[mm]

You missed his point, that hours can mean 2 or 200. So we don&#39;t know your personality and what you would have said it if, in your opinion, it wasn&#39;t, and even if you would not have said "hours" if it wasn&#39;t, we still didn&#39;t know how many hours. You could have said 7 hours and that would have been clear.

Don&#39;t be snotty, especially when you&#39;re asking for free advice.

Is there any chance the fan is on ON, and the thermostat is not accurate? Turn the thermostat down to 70 and see if goes lower than it is now.

Also check the outside unit and see if it is making noise, and see if you can tell if the noise is the fan and the compressor, or just the fan.

[mm]

Ask him what the problem is, and how long it will take to fix it.

Since he doesn&#39;t work for you, he may not tell you, but if you are nice, and not the least bit snotty, he may well tell you.

Maybe ask him if it&#39;s worth repairing or not, although that is not his decision and he may be much less willing to speculate. OTOH, if he knows it&#39;s a 50 dollar problem, he may be wiling to speculate. But you have to be even nicer to get answers to hard questions. (sometimes even when you yourself are paying).

[carie_r]

You&#39;ve got to be kidding. Enough "hours" that any human who has ever used A/C would recognize that there&#39;s a problem. Here&#39;s what he said: "Running for hours could mean anything more than one hour. There&#39;s not much information there. Let it run overnight. If it can&#39;t bring the apartment down to temperature overnight, then there&#39;s something definitely wrong with it."

Gee, do you really think there&#39;s something wrong if it can&#39;t get down to 80 deg overnight??? (It would do that with open windows and no A/ C.) I think I was more than polite.

The fan is on "Auto," so as to not recirculate air through vents in a hot attic when the compressor isn&#39;t on.

[carie_r]

The landlord is required to keep the A/C working properly. Are you suggesting that underhanded behavior is so common as to be practically expected?

[BobK207]

OP-

Your original post was unclear as to exactly how many "hours" it had been running 2? 3? 6?

Trying to determine AC performance without thermometer is futile

Oh & for clarity don&#39;t use 12:00PM ....use noon or midnight to avoid confusion

Clearly your AC unit is not working....for a 800 sq ft apt get a window unit. It&#39;s in your interest to reduce the operating costs you can easily save the cost of the unit in a few months.

cheers Bob

[mm]

No I"m not. Plenty of idiots post here. How do we tell who is an idiot and who isn&#39;t? Even half or more of the seemingly smart people fail to give enough information in their first post. EVen things they already know.

We had one a couple days ago who dribbled out the important information a little at a time until most people had I&#39;m sure stopped reading the thread before all the important facts were in.

And did you say that you had ever used AC before?

And again, you hadn&#39;t said how many hours. We can&#39;t read your mind.

What you think that any buman (who has ever used AC) would recognize might well not be what someone else thinks.

You were no way "more than polite". I think you were less than polite. You told him how many hours and then said "I would not have said "hours" if it wasn&#39;t..." as though he is supposed to know you personally and know you how reliably you report the facts. As if he had insulted you and you had to make it clear that you didn&#39;t deserve the insult. I woudn&#39;t have given the reply he did , but he didn&#39;t insult you. He explained why "hours" wasn&#39;t enough, and then he made a suggestion, to run it overnight, I presume because you first posted at 7:24PM Eastern Time.

And even if you are 100% reliable, you still don&#39;t get it that different people have different ideas of what is enough time for things to cool down. It&#39;s inevitable that at least a few of them will think that too little time is enough. How do we know you&#39;re not in that category?

Most people, when they said hours and the other person said, in whatever words, How many hours?, would just have replied, "Sorry. Seven."

Good to know.

The reason is fine, but even someone who intends to keep his fan on Auto, for whatever reason, might accidentally knock it to ON. Or he might put it to ON for testing and forget that he did so. Just yesterday someone posted about flipping a switch and not remembering a that he did. That&#39;s why it&#39;s important to check.

>

[mm]

BTW, in practice, I don&#39;t think the guy&#39;s certifications matter. I guess that&#39;s why I skipped this part before. He&#39;s the guy the landlord or the AC contractor chose to send. If I were the AC contractor, I&#39;d want to hire someone with certification**, and if he is going to recharge the system, I gather he must have certification, but one can know just as much without certification as with, and the important thing is that he diagnose the problem correctly. I don&#39;t have much AC experience but I"ve been misdiagosed over the years by 4 medical doctors with certification, 2 of them specialists, so certification doesn&#39;t impress me anymore.

**although if I had someone I knew knew AC, and he didn&#39;t have cert, but was cheaper to hire, and he wasn&#39;t going to be the only tech, I&#39;d hire him too. He can diagnose and do other repairs, and if it needs recharging, I&#39;ll send the certified guy.

Within a reasonable time, of learning it&#39;s not working properly. I think that is the law in all US states, unless the lease says something different, which it most likely doesn&#39;t. NYC and many places have more specific laws about providing heat, but I think not about providing AC.

I didn&#39;t suggest anything underhanded at all, on the part of the repairman or the landlord. What words are you referring to where you think I did?

It&#39;s often hard to get a good answer out of a repairman, whether you are paying the bill or someone else is, and I&#39;m not quite sure why**, but I don&#39;t think there is anything underhanded about it, except in a few cases that I don&#39;t think apply to you. They don&#39;t apply to you because he&#39;s not working for you, he works for the landlord. They probably don&#39;t apply to the landlord either, because all but the smallest landlords are a source of repeat business for contractors.

**Probably IMO the biggest reason is, if he&#39;s not the boss of the repair company, he doesn&#39;t want to make decisions that his employer has the power and right to make. He doesn&#39;t want to get caught in the middle between the customer and his boss, so he tells his boss what the situation is, and the boss deals with the customer. In this case, with a landlord/tenant, even if the repairman is the boss of his own company, he won&#39;t want to get caught between his "employer", the landlord who hires him, and the tenant. But this is not underhanded. It&#39;s totally reasonable. And the consequences when someone does get caught in the middle are often more than enough to keep him from ever letting it happen again.

Pretty much the only way out of this, afaict, for the customer is to seem like a regular guy who won&#39;t make a stink if the boss later contradicts the employee, or the landlord contradicts the contractor, because a regular guy understands that the boss is the boss, and the employee can&#39;t actually make committments. Once one gives that impression, he has to actually live up to it, or he, or she, is a scoundrel and dishonorable.

I"m not talking about accepting shoddy work. I&#39;m talking about asking the guy who comes to your house what the problem is, and how long it will take to fix it, and whether it is worth repairing it or not, and then if and when the boss or the landlord gives one different answers, saying, "Well the guy who was here says yada yada which contradicts you." One shouldn&#39;t say that.

Unless it is a literal life and death matter, and I can&#39;t imagine how that could be, one shouldn&#39;t do that. It doesn&#39;t matter what the guy tells you when he&#39;s there. It only matters that the AC gets fixed, and nothing the repair man SAYS to you has any effect on that.

If the guy tells you something and the boss or landlord tells you something else, one should just suck it up and not get the guy in trouble. If you get him in trouble -- even if he doesn&#39;t get in trouble, but he knows a customer quoted him when the boss said something else -- he&#39;ll never tell another customer a thing.

You may never know for sure who is right. Them&#39;s the breaks. Maybe the techician made a mistake, and somehow the boss knows it without even seeing the jobsite. Maybe the boss or landlord knows something the repair guy doesn&#39;t know. Maybe the landlord plans to replace the whole system in a year or two**, but doesn&#39;t want to say that or the tenants will hold him to it, even if he doesn&#39;t have as much money as he thinks he will (like if one or two apartments are unexpectedly vacant for a while) It&#39;s not at all necessary for either to be lying or underhanded for them to say different things.

**Maybe the landlord plans to sell the building in a year or two and isn&#39;t willing to do all the repairs he should. I&#39;m not saying every landlord does everything he should or that every repairman always does everything right. But I have no reason to think and didn&#39;t suggest that there was anything underhanded in this case.

[HeyBub]

Hmm. 12:00PM implies twelve hours past midday (p.m. = "post meridian" = past midday). That would be midnight. From there to 7:46PM means the ac has been on for almost twenty hours.

Of course one could also say 12:00AM (a.m. = "ante meridian" = before midday) which would also be midnight.

[spamhater]

That&#39;s your dick? I thought it was the tip of your thumb.

teeny tiny, eh?

[noname]

Are you 10 or 12?

[Noon-Air]

Only from landlords whos only concern is their profits on the bottom line. They are not gonna spend a penny they are not forced to.

[carie_r]

...

...

I wouldn&#39;t want advice from someone who didn&#39;t know, clearly, without having to think about it for an instanct, that 12:00PM is noon, and

12:00AM is midnight.

[carie_r]

BobK207 thinks enough of peoples intelligence to say "Oh & for clarity don&#39;t use 12:00PM ....use noon or midnight to avoid confusion." (The next most recent post in this thread, sorted by time.)