95F, and time for some janky engineering…
Not OEM…
Let me explain…
I live in North Carolina, and the temps are currently in the mid-90s. I had 3 undersized AC units battling in vain to keep the indoor temps livable.
Then I had 2 undersized AC units. When I was taking out my dogs in the morning, yesterday, I noticed that the condenser fan was louder than normal. 2 hours later, it was completely silent.
I’m not an HVAC tech/installer, but I did do a little troubleshooting. Breaker? On. Air handler? Running, but I prompt shut it off. Condenser? Hot. Very hot. Given all of that, I deduced that the compressor was probably fine, but that the fan motor had gone out. As far as failures go, it’s not awful - and only a little worse than a capacitor failure. The bad news was that it would take nearly a week to get the new unit.
In the few hours between realizing the AC failure, and the end of my work day, the downstairs had heated up by 10F. Forget nearly a week - we weren’t going to be ok for one day of this. The solution? A $30 floor fan, an Amazon box, and some packing tape.
The way my mind looked at the problem was as follows:
I need a fan that can move air, and transfer heat off of the condenser coil
The fan needs to be reasonably robust, and preferably roughly the size of the condenser housing - I have one, yay!
The fan I found meets #1 and #2, and the motor is roughly the same diameter as the vent void in the condenser housing - yay!
Turned on the fan to see if it would draw any air through the condenser housing - no. damn.
Got a cardboard Amazon box, cut it into strips to make a shroud, and I taped it in place - my dad would not be proud :p
Turned on the fan and it immediately blasted me with 130F air. is it enough airflow to sustain sufficient heat transfer at high ambient air temps?
Went inside and turned the unit back on
Condenser exhaust air temps stayed in the 125-140F range. Indoor air vent temps were 70F at that time
At that point, a solution was in place. Not great, but functional. Vent air temperatures have ranged from 65F to 73F. On the high end of that range, it’s not really enough to keep the house very cool, but it’s better than no AC.
And that’s the thing, my mind immediately goes to:
How much more airflow could I get with the housing off?
What kind of shroud would I have to build to ensure air flow through the heat exchanger?
How much time will that take?
How much more airflow could I get by removing the condenser fan assembly?
Would multiple, horizontal extractor fans be more efficient?
I consider it personal growth that I didn’t spend much time thinking about (or implementing) optimizations after I had my janky solution in place. There’s an overused quote about not letting perfect being the enemy of good enough. There are problems with this mentality, as there are issues with the converse.
But hey, this isn’t a zombie apocalypse… a part is on the way, and we can limp along until it arrives.
If this happened to you, what would you have done?
