TOPIC: Running A/C in cold weather

BTW Jay, you are one of the best story tellers I have ever read, keep the blogs coming they are such good reading

I second that..

Sorry I haven't had time for the placebo post.  I will get to it...

Shock  I run them all winter long and have not blown one up in 40 years. ?????????? that should otta stir it up

Drew, My post is not a response to yours.
Lighten up a little, you are not interpreting my post correctly.
I am not saying your wrong. You just scratched the surface, that's all.

The subject (as I am sure you know) reaches way beyond a few lines of text on a message board.  I feel that I can not cover the issue this way and am offering to discuss it with Greg on the phone so we can cover all the issues involved.

I have attempted to discuss this subject in detail in the past it is just too cumbersome to try to do it again and I am sure no one wants to follow a bunch of fragmented links on the subject. I simply do not want to spend three hours writing this subject down.

The subject of this thread comes up often it just gets pushed around in different directions and the subject matter is never really covered or understood, thus questions keep being asked about the same thing.

As on this thread HVAC contractors say there's nothing wrong with running an air conditioner in the wintertime. Then we have the home inspectors did say under some (misinterpreted) temperatures, equipment can and cannot be operated. It is more than outside air temperature. It's about the temperature differential between inside and outside the house. But then I know you realize this. Once you turn the heat on in the house, you generate temperature differential and causes refrigerant migration to the compressor oil. It can happen at 70°, or 65°, or 60°, etc.

The bottom line is that this type of information and testing is not really required by a home inspector. They all seem to have definitive opinions about the subject without knowing the actual facts. I'm simply offering to discuss the situation with anyone on the phone and wants to know these facts so that they can intelligently answer anyone who asks "why didn't you run my air conditioner this winter?".

I will ignore your childish comments and name calling and your opinion on my use of this message board.

If you think I'm trying to make myself sound great at the expense of yourself or others in a public forum, maybe you should reconsider that if I posted the entire subject matter you would still have the same opinion. I can very easily dispute some of the information you provided (which I did not do) as you didn't take the time to fully explain yourself. I am trying to avoid the same situation myself I'm not trying to answer this subject in two paragraphs or less.

I try to answer peoples questions when I can, but I don't have time to make everybody feel warm and fuzzy in the process. I am not sitting around with nothing to do on the message board. I have three computers running simultaneously in my office and I keep an eye on home inspection message boards in case someone needs some help while I'm writing my inspection reports.

I don't spend all kinds of time answering these questions so they may seem blunt. I use voice dictation and do not type so I can cover a lot of ground in very little time. Sorry if you were offended. I'll let you handle it from here.

Please pick up with what happens after refrigerant migrates into the compressor oil and you start the compressor.

David A. Andersen, I have an idea. Maybe you can post the reason why on your site and then you can direct people to your site to read about it. Maybe make a page. It would help us and in return you would get traffic which will help your rank. The other option is to have it posted on this forum as a sticky, where we can reference the subject.

Ok guys I am going to make a stab at this question as a HI one should understand a little about Refrigerant. Refrigerant be it liquid or vapor does not have to have a compressor operating for it to move in the system. Refrigerant always moves by itself to the coldest area of the system when the unit is off. The warmth of the location of the furnace indoors will always drive the refrigerant outside to the condenser (liquid migration) is the term. The refrigerant in some cases depending on the amount of refrigerant and the size of the condenser will backflow into the compressor and mix with the oil.

When one starts the A/C in these cool conditions you will be pumping the liquid refrigerant and the oil out of the compressor and when this occurs that is when the discharge valve in the compressor can be damaged and if the valves are not damaged the second possibility for damage would be if all of the oil is pumped from the compressor and does not return promptly it would be like operating your car with no oil it won't last long.

That being said I would state that the new scroll compressors do not have the old standard discharge valve plates and these compressors do a pretty good job of pumping oil and liquid refrigerant without damaging the compressor. The damage would occur if all of the oil was pumped out and did not return promptly and the odds of that happening is next to none.

There are many different circumstances to consider and I won't go into all of them at this time but if anyone would like we can carry this conversation another day.

As for operating a heat pump in the cooling mode in the winter months the unit switches to the cool mode by itself every time it goes into the defrost mode which is usually about once a hour or less so what possible damage could one create by switching the stat to cool???? none.



 

Let’s say I'm going to inspect a house, and it's 55 to 65 degrees outside, the house was built between 1975 to 1980, it's the original equipment when the house was built, it has a split unit, the condenser is located outside, the power has been off for who knows how long, the Real Estate agent says the utilities have just been turned on that day so you could do a thorough inspection, how would you deal with this situation given all of the information so far in this post?

(As a "home inspector" and not a A.C. Contractor or A.C.Tech.)

We all have specialty trades that we can go into that can confuse people, we want to know what are the industry standards for this business when it comes to HVAC, we all tend to lean towards what we know best when we do a home inspections its only natural.

I like the old expression "if its not broke don't fix it"

-Russ