Gas and Oil Home Heating Furnaces - A/C Not Working As Well As It Used To

We have a Lennox Heat pump system, just over two years old. The fan stopped working a few weeks ago (before it got REALLY hot), and the technician replaced the capacitor (jury-rigged it actually -- he attached 2 smaller capacitors because he did not have the right size). Once the temps started reaching 98+, we noticed our air wasn't (isn't) getting below 79 in the afternoon (last 2 summers we had no problem reaching 72-73). Several people have tried to figure out the problem but have been unsuccessful. One guy thought it was the expansion valve, so he replaced it, but this did not work. Any ideas? Could it be related at all to the jury-rigged capacitors?

has the right capacitor been put back on the unit

Not yet.

Bob, if the fan is blowing as hard as it originally did, then the capacitors are not the problem. One possibility is that when the fan was not working, the pressure built up in the system because there was no airflow to carry away the heat. Then the freon could escape because the system was not designed to retain it under such high pressure.
I hope the problem can be taken care for you without too much more grief. Hopefully, your compressor did not blow a seal. I wish your wife and her little one the best.

Sounds like a low freon problem to me, too. Good Luck!

Thanks for the information. We just gave birth to a baby girl on Thursday!

We had our outside unit cleaned well and some freon actually removed, and that helped some. We are still having a few problems, but fortunately the weather has lightened up a bit.

One thing I am definitely going to do this week is install turbines on the roof.