This week’s heat wave has taxed our upstairs AC unit to the maximum. I work upstairs every day and became alarmed at the rising temperatures there. The AC was not keeping up with its settings. I didn’t notice this last year but this is the first summer we’ve had our new upstairs office/bedroom, so any cooling issue has become more apparent.
I called up the neighborhood HVAC guy who went through his troubleshooting checklist. Refrigerant was fine, the compressor was fine. The blower coils were fine. Everything looked good. That is, until he checked the bottom of the blower in our attic.
It seems whoever installed our attic blower neglected to seal it properly. The bottom panel that the unit is supposed to sit on is missing entirely, meaning the AC is sucking the hot attic air into the house when it’s supposed to be sucking in the cooler inside air. For the past six summers this AC unit has been working twice as hard as it needed to be.
I crammed some towels in the void as a temporary measure and heard the whoosh of invading air immediately cease. Not only that, the AC is once again cooling to the set temperature! Tomorrow the HVAC guy will return with sheet metal to seal it up permanently.
I’m always enamored with the big, flashy environmental solutions but the routine, bread-and-butter fixes offer the biggest bang for the buck!