The $79 insect....

[pomtzu]

Last Wednesday, in the middle of this heatwave, the central a.c. decided to take a dump. Our service guy came out, replaced the capacitor on the blower fan motor, and it was back up and running in no time - until Saturday morning anyway. It's dead again! Called the company back - said it would be a minimum $120 weekend service call, and if it was the blower burned out, we wouldn't be able to get it fixed till Monday. So instead of dumping that money out for probably nothing, we held out for today. Saturday wasn't too bad in the house, since it was cooler and rained most of the day, but Sunday was brutal. It was well over 90 inside the house, and all the fans did was blow hot air around. I was tempted to sleep outside in the hammock last night, but toughed it out in here instead, and it did cool down a little over night. Pups and cats were miserable, along with their humans.
Around 10 this a.m., service guy shows up. It was a different, older guy than last week, and I'm glad it wasn't the same one. I don't think the other one would ever have found the problem. Anyway, this guy takes the cover off the electric works on the inside, and starts testing this and that - couldn't find any reason for the problem at first, and then - success. It seems an insect - maybe about 1/2" long creepy crawly looking thing, decided to sit on the contacts when the unit wasn't running, and when it kicked back on and the contacts tried to close, Mr Bug got mashed between them and interrupted the circuit and shut the fan down.
Holy crap - never heard of such a thing!!! But he pulled the bug out with tweezers, hooked a couple of wires back up, and the old girl is working once again. He said it's not a common problem at all, but it does happen on occasion!
Service call - $79. Pretty darn expensive bug, but at least we have the a.c. again. I text'ed the info to son and DIL and they both had the same response - "you're kidding - right??" Wish I had kept the bug and taped it to the bottom of the bill..........

[Daisy and Delilah]

Living in Florida, I can fully understand and believe this. We have a serious problem of squirrels chewing our car wires.

I'm glad you got the AC back, Ellie. If it gets any hotter here, I have to move to Alaska.

[Laura's Babies]

Gee whiz, that much for a service call? Not "user friendly" are they? But it was a week end..

That capacitor is what went out on mine the first time it went out, the second time he said was probably because they didn't connect the capacitor secure enough because a wire was just loose on it so that was a free visit..

[Freedom]

Who woulda thunk it?

Glad you are cool again. WOW!

[Karen]

That's why they call computer glitches "bugs" as long ago, a fly got into the system and shorted out one of the first computers!

[boomersooner]

Wow!!! What a bug!!

[Bonny]

Glad to hear you got the system back up & running. The earwig is a bug around here that is drawn to electricity & people have had trouble with them. They smell horrible when a person squashes them. It must be all the rainy damp weather we have had to bring them on.

[davidpizzica]

Living in Florida, I can fully understand and believe this. We have a serious problem of squirrels chewing our car wires.

I'm glad you got the AC back, Ellie. If it gets any hotter here, I have to move to Alaska.

D&D, a couple of years ago I had an episode with MICE chewing through my car wires! At the time I owned a 2007 chevy cobalt and when I was going to church one sunday, I found I couldn't shift out of low, use the acceralator right or use the car very well. I made it home and my brother nursed the car over to the nearest chevrolet dealer and that's when we found out about the chewn wires! It wasn't under warranty, darn it!