Thermostat set to 73, it's 77 in the house.

In reply to KyAllroad:

Actually you can control coil temperatures with refrigerant levels. At proper refrigerant levels with proper air flow, the coils temperature never drops below freezing and doesn't ice up. If the refrigerant levels are a little low, the coil will freeze. If they are a lot low, the compressor and lines will freeze. Changing the refrigerant levels changes where in the system the liquid refrigerant turns to gas.

The red side is high pressure. As the condenser coil cools the gas, it turns to a liquid. The TVX valve drops the pressure and as the evap coil warms the liquid it turns back to gas. If the pressures are too low, the liquid will turn to gas before it ever gets to the evap coil and you get no cooling. Basically, the blue part of the cycle moves to the wrong part of the system.

I'm not a HVAC guy, but that's how I understand the system to work.

z31maniac wrote:

Grizz wrote: Screw SEER ratings. Unless your house is huge you don't need more than 13-16. Look into zoning setups instead. Puts dampers into the ductwork that open and close depending on which floor has priority.

What? Me thinks you are confusing SEER with AC tonnage.

Nope. Tonnage is a different kettle of fish.

Fun times pulling a 5 ton unit out of a 1500 sqft house and explaining to the owner that that is exactly why the damn thing broke in the first place.

Most of the time an average house is just fine with a 2-2 1/2 ton, 13 seer unit. Anyone pushes something bigger or higher seer it's just to get more money out of you.

There are many, many things you can do to increase the efficiency and the cooling of your AC before you need to get into the high dollar mega Seer crap. If you want to go into full retard territory, look into geothermal stuff. It's really cool, but it's got a ridiculous price tag at the start.

Well, I am an idiot.

I should have spent more than 30 seconds troubleshooting it. The fan on the air handler wasn't running. You know what they say about assume and I just assumed the worst.

It had a bad fan relay. Total cost will be free money because the A/C guy owed me a favor.

I hate it when I do stupid crap.

I am going to continue the research and start planning for replacement. This unit is 14-15 years old and was a cheap spec unit to start with.

Hell, making a mistake is better than shelling out cash to fix a leak

In reply to Grizz:

Very true.