it’s hucking fot on this heap… and my air conditioner that I bought NEW last april and only ran from last June until maybe october, has begun to wimp out on me. It’s just like… you know… not cutting it. Last year, when it was JUST AS HOT AS IT ALWAYS IS in Taipei in summer, I could never put it below 18C cause it would be too cold. I kept it at around 19-20. This year, the thing is practically blowing warm air. I had the guy who fixed my school’s air conditioning system come to my house to take a lookie-loo and he said it didn’t need more refrigerant stuff, that in fact, nothing was wrong with it. Then he spent 20 minutes hosing down my roof and charged me a 1000NT at the end of it all.
Does anyone know anything about a/c’s??? Can anyone recommend someone who knows what they’re doing cause him telling me nothing is wrong with it while standing under the warm air it’s churning out… :s
You ring the company who made it and they send a guy out. You do not ring anyone else, especially not a chimney sweep. If it’s a Hitachi, ring Hitachi. If it’s a White-Westinghouse, ring White-Westinghouse. If it’s A Ching Bong Ding-a-ling, ring Ching Bong Ding-a-ling. They will not clean your roof. They might charge you 300-600 bucks tops for coming out to tell you it needs more gas (which they never bring with them for some reason).
No-one here knows anything about airconditioning. It is a form of White-man’s Magic which makes cold air out of the very ether. (Kneels). Not to be messed with. Like the Electricity God which lives in the burny-hot wires in the Box of Heavenly Chaos under the stairs. Let us pray.
The number should be on the side of the outside unit or on the manual/warranty card somewhere.
sounds like you is living in a tin shack rooftop…which means your air will get super heated if you are exposed to all day sun…which means your aircon wont be able to cope with the load…ive experienced this myself…the air coming out doesnt seem cold at all because the air going in is too hot to be cooled down to 18 degrees…hence your repair man watering your roof…not much else you can do except run it 24 hours a day…
It needs gas! They never bring it with them, like Lord Lucan said, so it’s another trip out to your place, with the gas this time, and another NT$1000 in the pocket. Easy money. :s
I agree with Lord Lucan: Phone the service section of the a/c manufacturer. If it’s a big name brand, the techs who come by are usually on the ball. Far better than any hack who might have an a/c service nearby. However, it may take them a few days to come by.
Some other things to consider:
use 3M filters, and clean the metal grill inside with that aersol a/c spray. Do this regulary.
Make sure the unit has lots of clearance from any nearby wall, or other items that might obstruct the air intake vents on the sides and top of the unit. If you do not have more than a foot clearance, don’t turn the setting on low (keep it on med. or high), and keep the temperature around 22 or so.
Is the unit draining correctly? Is there enough of an angle for the water to drain out correctly?
Try turning off /on all the power in your house. Sometimes this will reset the IC board settings.
It’s doesn’t need gas… nor does it need refrigerant. I rang the manufacturer over the weekend and Piesay Pete was there in a flash to tell me absolutely nothing is wrong with it. I think living in a roof top could be the problem, but I’m telling ya, last year the thing was a wild, cold-air beast… in my same tin-roof shack. They’ve checked the 冷煤, they’ve shoved thermometers into the grates. All seems fine. He told me to save my money and get a few more fans to help circulate the air instead of paying the 300NT for him to come out.
I thought maybe the thermometer needed to be callibrated, but alas, there is nothing wrong with that either. I think i’m going to try that IC board thing by turing off the power…
If the air coming out isn’t at least 12 degrees C colder than the air going in either it’s bust or it’s not man enough. If it was good last year…
Is it a split unit? If so, is the cold line going in freezing cold? Should be between zero and 4 degrees C. If the R22, R12, or Kool-aid coming out of the heat exchanger/condensor is freezing cold, then your evaporator is not working. Did they check the airflow was up to the correct number of litres per minute? Is the temperature sensor on the evaporator covered in crap, or is it touching the evaporator fins? If it’s touching the fins which are very very cold then it will be incorrectly reporting the incoming air is already cold enough. So is the compressor cycling on and off? Has there been some change to your electrical setup which means the compressor can’t gather together a big enough current to start when it wants to? A/c units are mechanically simple but if all mechanical is working well then a new IC board or full reset might help. I’m surprised the bods from the company haven’t been more help. What make is it?
The 3m airconditioner cleaner spray is the answer to this problem.
Take the face off of your AC and spray the foam into the grill. Hold the can as close to the grill as possible. Wait 5 minutes and wipe it with a wet cloth and then spray it heavily with a water bottle on stream setting. Let it sit for 30 mins. before turning it on. My ACs grills were very clogged, so I scrubbed mine lightly with a toothbrush. The grill is fragile, brush lightly.
I can’t believe how good this stuff works.
Good luck, Mark
So hang on, there you are being blasted with warm air from a supposed air con and Paisay Pete (I like that one) is busy testing everything and saying that’s not warm air, it’s cold air and everything is alright? Why didn’t you kill him?
Also, setting off a thermonuclear device several miles from the unit has been known to clear stuck ICs by virtue of the electromagnetic sho… oh look. Time to go home.
[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]So hang on, there you are being blasted with warm air from a supposed air con and Paisay Pete (I like that one) is busy testing everything and saying that’s not warm air, it’s cold air and everything is alright? Why didn’t you kill him?
HG[/quote]
yup… with a whole lot of 我不騙妳’s thrown in there… my air con is a wall unit, not a window unit. neither Peisay Pete or Willy Wu took the bloody thing down off the wall to inspect it’s guts.
Lord Lucan… you know way too much about Air cons… if you have the equipment to test/repair I have a 6 pack of cold beer for you. I don’t know what any of those terms means… i don’t even know what the hell an IC is that I’ll be powering down for…
I’ve cleaned the filters and have never seen 3M spray… can it be had at Geant?
The two knobbies that are connected to the two tubes that connect to the outer fan that is mounted on the outside all of my tin-shack are ice-cold… that’s why he said I don’t need 冷煤. There are not weird drips or funny noises from the either the inside or outside unit.
It’s a Westinghouse.
Does the compressor come on? (It must do if the nubbins are freezing cold. Are they actually freezing? They should be so cold you can’t pinch them for more than a short time. Ahem.)
Are the nubbins equally cold as one another and the compressor is only going on for a short time? Given you live in an oven the compressor should be running almost all the time. If both nubbins pipes are equally cold and the compressor is only coming on for a short time, that means the return part of the circuit is coming back cold liquid instead of coldish gas and you’re just moving cold liquid about rather than exchanging heat. That would then suggest your evaporator is not working. It could be blocked or full of crap, and the thermostat may be broken or touching the fins tricking the machine into thinking your room is 4 degrees C. But you say the evaporator fins are clear of obstruction and the evaporator is cold and air is flowing through it OK?
If there is not enough refrigerant the compressor will stop due to its automatic safety device which I assume it has. Generally speaking they will run right down to almost no refrigerant and then just stop.
Is the evaporator, which is the bit with fins inside the room, cold? Are the fins cold and are the little pipes than feed the fins cold all the way around? Your blokie should have taken all the plastic off and been checking to see if there was a magic blockage in the evaporator somewhere, which would be a “warm” bit.
They key I think is to turn the thing on full blast and see how long the compressor goes on for before it cycles off. It should be a long time. In fact it should only go off when it needs to save itself from burning out.
[quote=“bushibanned”][quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]So hang on, there you are being blasted with warm air from a supposed air con and Paisay Pete (I like that one) is busy testing everything and saying that’s not warm air, it’s cold air and everything is alright? Why didn’t you kill him?
HG[/quote]
yup… with a whole lot of 我不騙妳’s thrown in there… my air con is a wall unit, not a window unit. neither Peisay Pete or Willy Wu took the bloody thing down off the wall to inspect it’s guts.
Lord Lucan… you know way too much about Air cons… if you have the equipment to test/repair I have a 6 pack of cold beer for you. I don’t know what any of those terms means… i don’t even know what the hell an IC is that I’ll be powering down for…
I’ve cleaned the filters and have never seen 3M spray… can it be had at Geant?
The two knobbies that are connected to the two tubes that connect to the outer fan that is mounted on the outside all of my tin-shack are ice-cold… that’s why he said I don’t need 冷煤. There are not weird drips or funny noises from the either the inside or outside unit.
It’s a Westinghouse.[/quote]
oh god…there in lies the rub…westies are the lemons of the aircon world in taiwan;
had one last year, crapped out on me. got pete in and he pretended to fiddle with it and claimed it was fixed. broke again 10 mins after he left. had to make him take it away and run it in the factory since it was an intermittent type fault.
i bought a new aircon last week; while perusing the literature at chuanguo i noticed their comparison of brands…westing was at the bottom with the only special feature listed as “budget model”.
but seriously if its a 2500 kcal/hr type for a 3-4 ping room and you is running it on a rooftop…it simply wont produce enough cold air fast enough in summer to bring u any relief…
Our aircon needed a new bearing for the fan motor’s shaft. Called a company, they said they would come and never did, called another, they said they would come the next day and never did. I got pissed off again as nobody ever even friggin calls to say they can’t make it in the dead of heat with a screeming airconditioner on my wall so I passed it onto the wife and told her she should have to deal with her own “people”. She called a guy out, that couldn’t have been more of a cowboy if his name was Clint and he wore a poncho and spurs. He charged 2000 Duckin Nollars to swith one unit with one from the other room, that I could have done myself if I hadn’t believed his sh1t about a unit weighing about 90 KGs and needing the help of another employee. He also gave me some codswallop about a bearing repair costing an extra 1,500 for the part and then the extra 2000 for another trip here and back to fix it. I realized by now that this guy was the usual full of donkey droppings type and decided to fix it myself. After hearing a lot of “Ooo, it’s too difficult to do by yourself” and “Bu Tai Jen-dans”, I went down to RT mart, bought a 300nt socket set, striped it out, bought a new bearing and installed it. It took me 3 hrs of work and cost 700 for the bearing at another aircon store.
So I can say that you shouldn’t hire Taiwanese to do an honest mans job, and to at least have a crack yourself if your aircon is out of date and not worth spending too many nts on it. It’s thereputic anyway and makes you feel manly! Feel my throbbing biceps!!!
Oh, and yes the unit works fine now and sounds like a gagged Barry White in a padded out asylum cell humming in D minor from a 100 yards away. A beautiful sound it is too.