Contact Abacus Air Conditioning & Heating
Transcripts:
Alex Sanchez:
The cleaner it is, the easier it’s going to breathe, the less energy it’s going to use to cool down your house.
Hello. My name’s Alex. I’m an AC technician with Abacus. Today we’re going to show the importance of performing an AC tune-up every year for homeowners.
First things first on when checking an AC system to see if it’s cooling properly, first we want to check the incoming air temperature of the system. Right now we have an incoming air temperature of 71 degrees. We’re going to check the other side of the system to see what’s the air temperature coming out of the system. The difference of air going in and out should be minimum difference of 16 degrees.
Our temperature’s still dropping into the fifties, I know that the system is cooling properly and we’re set to go in terms of cooling capacity of the system.
Next step, we check your drain line. We just looked down this sight glass to see if the water’s flowing properly, and we also dropped down some drain tablets to help keep it clear.
If you ever do have a backup, most systems come with an overflow switch, which is inside your secondary pan here. If your water gets too high, it’s going to shut off the system from producing any more water and protect your sheetrock from any water damage.
Next thing, we’re going to check your blower motor to see if it’s pulling any extra amps it doesn’t need. The blower motor is inside your furnace. Most people think that, “Hey, when we’re using our AC, we’re not using our furnace.” That’s wrong. Our blower motor’s always working for both heating and cooling, so keeping this in top form is going to help you out in the cooling season and the winter season.
Right now we’re pulling 2.9 amps, which is within manufacturer range, so we know that your blower motor is going to be good for your summer and for your winter.
Next thing is we’re going to check any burn marks on your circuit board just to make sure that maybe something is over-amping or starting to catch on fire we can catch it. We’re also going to check the blower motor, see if it’s clean. As of now, the blower motor is clean, so we know that the system is clean and that your air ducts are clean.
All right, next we’re going to check your air filter to see if it needs to be changed or not. We’re just going to open up this door right here, slide out the air filter. This one’s not too dirty, but it’s already been six months, so we’re going to go ahead and replace it.
Have the new one. Make sure that your arrow is pointing to your furnace. Slide it in. Put back on your door, and you’re all set to go.
So now we’re checking the outdoor unit. I just hooked up my gauges. We’re checking all your pressures and all the readings of the unit to make sure it’s in within manufacturer range. Right now for these Bluetooth gauges, all my readings are here on my phone, and we can tell that all the readings are correct and within manufacturer range, so we know that the system has enough refrigerant or Freon to work through the summer and cool down the house.
Next, we’re checking all the electrical inside the electrical compartment, making sure nothing is overamping. First things first we’re checking our compressor. Right now we’re only pulling 7.4 amps, which is good, it’s within manufacturer range. And now we’re going to check your fan motor to make sure that it’s not overamping either.
Right now we’re pulling .5 amps, which is within manufacturer range, so we know that the compressors is not overamping and that the fan motor is not overamping and is ready for the summer.
We just turned off the power to the unit. This is your disconnect. It just basically controls the power going into your unit from your breaker box. Now we’re going to check your capacitor.
Each capacitor has its own reading that we see on the side of the capacitor here, so we know what readings we need and to see if your capacitor is getting weak or not. We’re getting 35 microfarads. Now we’re going to check common and for your fan. We’re getting five microfarads. This capacitor is a 35/5, so we know that the capacitor has its full charge and you’re set for the summer in terms of your capacitor.
Next, we’re going to disassemble the unit and we’re going to clean the unit from the inside out. What we check, if these fins are dirty, which they are right now, we also check the inside of the unit, see if there’s any debris, leaves, dirt inside the unit. We want to clean all that out.
The reason why is we want to keep up the efficiency of the unit. The cleaner it is, the easier it’s going to breathe, the less energy it’s going to use to cool down your house, and it’s going to prolong the life of the system.
Alrighty. We’re going to turn everything back on. Once everything is running we’re going to check our pressures one more time just to make sure that the system is pumping correctly and that we have our refrigerant at a good level, which it is.
We always recommend customers to do maintenance twice a year. This helps just maintain the system, prolong its life. Also, some manufacturers and companies require you to do a yearly biannual maintenance just to keep up the warranties for the system.
