Gas and Oil Home Heating Furnaces - Central Air not coming on

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Lesa
09-12-02, 05:41 AM
Last night during the night I kept hearing a strange humming from time to time. Finally got up and figured out it was coming from the AC unit upstairs. It was on auto and apparently it was trying to come on but could not. It just hummed about 10 seconds and then would stop. I tried just turning the fan on via the thermostat and the same thing happened.

My unit is an older AC/Heating Intertherm combination.

If I manually try to turn it on via the thermostat the same thing happens. Just a big hum. Could it be the fan and if so are those horribly expensive to fix?

Thanks

Lisa


bigjohn
09-12-02, 05:28 PM
It sounds like the problem is with the indoor fan motor. Cost to repair depends on what's wrong. Something simple like a bad capacitor should not be expensive but a bad motor would cost more.

Lesa
09-12-02, 05:38 PM
Thank you for your response.

I am just wondering. When you say it could be a fan motor and that could be more.... are we talking over a thousand?
(ballpark figure)

I just don't want to be in total shock when I get an estimate.
:)

Thanks,


bigjohn
09-12-02, 06:08 PM
Good Lord no! I would say more like $150 to $300. I hope you've turned it off and let the motor cool off. Continuing like it is just overheats the motor and could toast it. Checking out the problem is not beyond a handy DIY, but you have to be comfortable around electricity and familiar with motors. If you're interested in learning, if for no other reason than to be more knowledgeable with the repair guy, go to www.fasco.com, place the cursor on distributor services and then click on Fasco facts. That will take you to a page from which you can go to an index of topics about motors commonly used in heating/cooling systems.

Databoy
09-13-02, 11:07 PM
Lisa,

Please take a look at the thread that is under Databoy. It was done quite recently when I was trying to figure out my A/C. Mine was humming as well, and it was the compressor that was actually humming (ok, more like an I'm gonna blow noise).

The motor would switch off and the (outside) fan would quit running, causing the compressor to overload.

Mine turned out to be just the fan capacitor, and they do not look like they are hard to replace at all.

As stated before, the A/C guy told me that a motor replacement would have cost about $350.00.

Data