So, the A/C guy came by Saturday. Saturday!
Turns out, his company is no longer a subsidiary of Dial One – I can let my little dinky back-up switch go for that. All perceived grievances are now annulled.
While he was here, I had him look at the front unit that had frozen up the other night. I was right, it had frozen up. He opened up the unit in the attic and showed me the cause – absolutely filthy cooling coils from years upon years of neglect.
At this point, I’m looking at either spending ~$600 to have them cleaned ( this actually involves removing the coils, and they may not survive ), leaving it be until it dies a horrible screeching death, or dropping a few grand on a new unit.
*sigh*
So, for those of you who are looking into buying a house, or may at some point in the future, please, PLEASE, save yourself a lot of hassle and money and have an actual A/C guy be a part of your inspections.
And to boot, one of my 20A breakers keeps flipping. Unfortunately, it’s the circuit the fridge lives on. I went and got a new one and replaced it, but it just keeps flipping. Maybe a 30A will do the trick – I wouldn’t imagine it’d do harm, but then again, I don’t really know these things.
Any other NOLA homeowners have an electrician they can recommend?
Re electric: check the connections. The fridge is the only thing on the line right? Gotta be a wire thing if the connections are sound, and upping the breaker COULD just hide the problem, creating a hazard. Everything but the stove µ has a separate line in our house, it’s code.
Replacing the wire may be what you need to do, it’s not hard. Obviously it should be the right gauge…
Agreed. For the meantime though, I’ll run the 30A breaker so my food stays cold.
Please don’t upgrade just the breaker – you run a serious risk of burning down your house unless you replace the wire from the panel to every outlet on that circuit and check the outlets to make sure they’re certified for 30A.
Also, what Portia said is exactly right. Unless you’ve purchased a new fridge, it should be ok with a 20A breaker. You might want to vacuum the coils on the back of the fridge as they get dirty and check that nothing else is plugged in on that circuit.