house wide dimming, condenser fan buzzing…
This is some background from my first post.
I bought a foreclosure this past year and it has an old Carrier infinity (38YXA036320) which originally had zone controllers and lots of fancy stuff in the duct and blower areas. When we bought the house, as is, it had a generic Emerson thermostat for 1 stage operation and none of the communicating features were usable. A replacement for the original thermostat is over $*** and only found second hand online. We had it checked out and it was functional and in late spring as it got warm it would not cool. Called out a local company and they found it had no freon and they refilled it… I live in a very very hot humid place and AC performance and efficiency is highly desirable, so cost is arguably justifiable long term. Either way, I am going to look at buying something for reliability’s sake come fall.”
Last week I noticed the air in the house was humid and it was getting warm. I checked thermostat and it was on, but not cooling. I could hear the blower and went out back to check the condenser and the fan was not spinning and I heard an electronic buzzing/humming from the unit. I turned everything off and started researching. Fist thought is the fan motor, so I ordered the same part number (ge motor) from amazon and then I read a post about the transformer causing voltage drops and unstable amperage if its compromised and/or old.
In this old house from 1962, they added on an apartment suite and eventually a full house 17kw/h natural gas generator. I have noticed that we have extreme dips in the lights, especially LED and Dimmable lights. This seems to be worse in wet weather and I have a call out to the power company to inspect and test the transformer. One reddit post indicated that old transformers can act as a bottleneck and even with a 100amp breaker for the house, there should not be huge dips from the condenser, or blower, or other appliances across the whole house.
Any thoughts? Does any of this stuff point to anything directly wrong with the hvac components? I replaced the capacitor a few weeks ago when hoping it was just the old one failing. This seemed to not make much difference from the light dimming issue. I want to replace the unit but want to wait until Fall to do so, mostly for comfort since its very very hot here.
Any input would be helpful and thank y’all in advance.