Expensive capacitor

[micky]

That's good service.

Very good service.

[Stormin Mormon]

In my part of the world, yes, that's a very valid way to make metals disappear.

[Stormin Mormon]

I've had some success, to turn off the power to the AC. Rinse it from the back with a garden hose on fan spray (nozzle about two or three inches from the metal coils). Some times you can rinse a lot of dirt out, and the AC starts working again.

The real way is to take the AC outdoors, and take the cover off (lot of little screws). Use coil cleaner and various sizes of nylon brush and garden hose for rinsing.

[Stormin Mormon]

I service refrigeration equipment. This week, I was in a store with a cooler that didn't work properly and by eye, the coils / fins were still perfectly clear. I was amazed how much debris and dust came out when I cleaned it.

Appearances are deceiving.

[trader_4]

I wonder what would happen if a customer refused to pay the $369 and it wound up in small claims court. It would be an interesting case, how far you can jack a price for a $20 common part that is widely available. Courts generally don't want to get involved in what's a fair price and I think in this case the tech would win, because he told Ralph the price before he put it in and Ralph agreed to it. But I wonder what would happen where the customer didn't know the price or agree to it before it was done? Seems there has to be some limit on what they can jack part prices up to. Suppose they told you the $20 cap was $500, $1000, etc?

Also, I'm not clear on what the final price for everything was. I think Ralph is saying it was $89 for the call, $369 for the cap, plus another $100 to clean the coils. That would be $558?

[Stormin Mormon]

When people free market generators and such after a hurricane, people scream about price gouging. And the courts appear to take a stand, then.

I've heard (not living in hurricane country) that the gas stations can't charge more for hurricane gas. No incentive to put in a generator, so they do not. When the hurricane comes through, the gas is same price, but the store is closed and the pumps won't pump. All the people who need gasoline are unable to find any.

Same deal with generators, not worth the bother.

[trader_4]

Agree with the observations. But some places have laws that specifically cover natural disasters, emergency situations, etc and it's only in those cases that I've heard of those "price gouging" laws applying. I agree, it doesn't make sense to me. If someone wants to load up a truck, drive

3 states over, stay up at night selling them, I have no problem with them setting the price at whatever they want. It serves a perfectly valid economic purpose, it encourages people to bring in water, food, generators, etc.

It's also hard to imagine that the local hardware store is going to suddenly jack up the price of generators and batteries. The gain isn't worth the bad publicity, alienating customers, etc. Some businesses would do it, but it's not the widespread issue that the typicl lib, ant-business types want to make it out to be.

[Ralph Mowery]

Read a number of years ago a big city (thinking New York) had a garbage collectors strike in the winter time. A person would wrap his garbage up like Christmas presents and park with the car unlocked in different parts of the city and when they came back the garbage/presents were gone.

[Ralph Mowery]

You have it correct. I was told it would be $ 89 for the man to come out and check the problem. He told me they had 5 levels of standard charges and the one to replace the capacitor was $ 369. I could have let him go on his way and replaced the capacitor myself. Being on a Saturday morning and no parts I told him to go ahead. With this he did hook up the gauges and thermocouples to the unit to give it a better checkout. Everything looked good.

He then said something about cleaning the coils, doing what they call a tune up for a standard $ 100 aditional charge. Told him to go ahead. For what it is worth the head pressure dropped from about 200 psi to 150 psi. This is for a R-22 unit and it was about 90 deg outside at the time and pushing 80 deg inside. It could have been the dirt or the cool water on the coils that dropped the pressure. Like I told the man, I know enough about the system to be dangerous. I did get the required cards to work on all kinds of refregeration systems where I worked. Did not have much practical experiance with them as the mechanics did most of the work and about all I did was hook up the wires to the motor or replace some control parts. All the cards do is certify that you know the basic rules not to let out the refregerant in the air.

The whole charge was around $ 558. The service man explained to me that people don't seem to balk at paying prices for parts nearly as if they would charge $ 300 to come out and then $ 50 for the part.

My dad worked at an appliance store and mother was a bookkeeper for the same store, so I know a little about how things work out.

For a week-end and the work he did and the education I got, I am ok with the total. I do have a capacitor and contactor on order from ebay incase either go out. Total for them was less than $ 35 shipped.

If it had been just me I would have looked the thing over and if I could not have found the problem or needed a part waited to Monday , but I have to keep the wife happy no matter what the cost..Most on here would probably do the same.

[Ralph Mowery]

It is different is an emergency and jacking up the prices. I don't know how it is now at the baseball games, but a number of years ago I took the family to see a major league baseball game. The water,soft drinks,and beer was all the same price at about $ 4 each in the stands. At that time you could get between 12 and 24 bottles for the same price in the stores. That is way out of line, but no one had to pay for it if they did not want to. Found out later you could bring in your own drinks if in plastic bottles and a small cooler if you wanted to. Did that the next year.

Most of the time when I have had something done, they usually tell me the price of the parts and things and ask if I want it done. Knowing full well that 99% of the people will say go ahead.

[Muggles]

Hey, we finally got one window unit to work. We cleaned it out, and also moved the location it was plugged in to. There is a dedicated circuit we used to use to plug outdoor lighting into, so we ran an outdoor heavy duty extension chord to it and plugged the AC into and it hasn't tripped. Kind of odd, though, cuz, it used to work fine in the receptacle it was plugged in to but kept tripping. So far it hasn't tripped and it's been running 45 minutes. Before it tripped after 10 minutes.

[Muggles]

We washed it out good. I'm crossing my fingers that doing that and plugging it into a dedicated circuit will solve the problem.

[Muggles]

I forgot to ask, did I see you post you were in New York? That would definitely be another part of the world for sure.

[Muggles]

Now that's brilliant.

[Muggles]

You're a good husband. :)

[clare]

I'm talking central air - not a window cooler.

[clare]

If you want it to dissapear REAL fast, put a price on it. Even a buck. Some guys can't resist pinching something,

[Ralph Mowery]

I admitt that I know very little about the temp/press curves and charts, but I looked at a chart and it seems to show that at 90 deg F the r-22 should be about 168 and the r-401 should be around 273. Did not see the r-12 in the chart, but that is mainly used in cars and not in home systems.

It may not have been 90 deg at the time I looked at the gauges but should have close to it, but unless I looked at the gauges wrong (I know they have several scales on them,but was looking at the outside one and thought it was psi) that is what they had. The coils could have been somewhat cooler when I looked at them after he cleaned them as they may have been wet and the water on them was cooler than the air as it came out of my well. The surge tank is about 5 gallons and is under the house so it was in the cool.

I know the system is r-22 as that is what I wanted put in at the time. I could have had either the 401 or r-22. I know r-22 was on the way out, but had a container of that gas if I needed it. I looked on the side of the unit and the name plate says r-22.

[Stormin Mormon]

Are you talking about air cooled condenser? With fan forced air flow?

If the answer is yes, then it's attracting dust. Even without the fan, it gets dusty.

[Stormin Mormon]

I'm in the western end of NYS. Two miles from me is a cow farm. A couple miles in the other direction, they farm for corn, and some farm for hay or wheat. Moo!

About 300 miles west of Lawn Guylan.