While waiting for the hurricane, our a/c decided to no longer play

I know, right?

The condenser made some odd noises the other day, like maybe something had gotten stuck in the fan. But it quickly cleared up. That means it’s totally good, right? 

The system ran fine yesterday.

Right around dinner time, it sounded like a bearing had gone bad. Loud. Not a good sound. Fan still spinning but not at full speed

It’s dark, rain is in the area, and who knows what Thursday will look like. 

Maybe I could oil the motor and at least get us through the weekend?

I popped the top of the unit and grabbed my trusty can of 3-In-One. 

Drip, drip, drip.

Give the fan a spin, and it spins good. Really good. 

But why is the motor’s shaft not spinning in concert with the fan?

The fan’s hub had separated from the fan blades.

That I’m not going to fix. 

Placed a service call right as they opened at 8:00 this morning.

“Let me check something with the dispatcher....”

I wait. I wait. This isn’t going to happen today, right?

“Okay, we can have someone there by noon today.”

A text a minute later: The tech will be there in a few.

Yep, the tech confirmed, the fan’s hub separated from the blades. He’s seen this before. They have to order fan but, knock on wood, his temporary fix will hold. 

Dude was here and gone by 9:00.

While we wait for the power to go out, at least the house is cooling down....

Glad you got someone to come out and look at it. Hopefully it holds together until the new fan shows up.

Our system was from the 1980's, but thankfully there's an HVAC supply house just up the road who've been very helpful in coaching me how to nurse it along over the years. 

Even better, they pointed me to a local guy(1-man shop) who was able to keep it going even longer while we waited for him to have time to install a new system. He was 40% cheaper than any of the bigger shops & has been awesome to work with. 

This was written

like a haiku

Electricity.

Hope your a/c holds up. 

I had that exact same failure at my old house. First, the fan motor died a horrible noisy death at 1am one night:

(Volume warning!)

Then, a week after the fan motor was replaced, the hub separated from the fan:

The HVAC company my landlord hired completely disassembled the outdoor unit before figuring out that they didn't have the fan assembly in stock. It took 3 days for it to come in which meant no A/C for 3 days, in September, in Florida. I was not very happy.

In reply to stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) :

That sucks. I told the tech what I thought was broken and he was like, Yep, you were right.

If only they splined the hub to the blades....