Air Compressor repair

[havasu]

My Craftsman air compressor (25 gallon) had a leaky bypass valve. Problem was, everyone I spoke to couldn't tell me why the air was leaking down beyond the pressure between the tank and the valves. I priced out all the parts, and they came to over $100, but couldn't guaranty this would fix my problem.

The other day, I see my neighbor had tossed an old, unknown brand air compressor out in the trash to be hauled away. I saw the bleeder valves, bypass valve and pressure switch were all the same as what I had. Well, it took 2 hours and swapped out the parts with all my defective parts, and now I have a solid running air compressor. I lubed it up and tightened all the shields, and it is like a new compressor.

Oh, by the way, it is 109 in the garage right now, so I am a pile of sweat but it was worth it. Expected to climb to 116 today. Hell, today is hotter than it is at the Colorado River!

 

[bud16415]

Way to go. Scrounged parts are the best.


It’s only been getting high 80’s here but the humidity is almost 100%. I have been working in my workshop and running the $5 AC I got at a yard sale. Had it 68 in there today.

 

[oldognewtrick]

Necessity is the mother of invention. And you thought it was Frank Zappa, didn't ya.

 

[havasu]

Now I regret not telling my a/c installer to add a few ducts into the garage.

 

[bud16415]

Grab a 10,000 BTU window unit and frame a hole thru the wall. It won’t tax the house unit and will do wonders when you are out tinkering on the hot rod.

 

[driz]

For your next adventure don’t ever forget that a lot of those parts are generic. When my Campbell housefields switch went titttys up I got a pressure sensor for a regular house well for around $25 that fits and works perfectly. I never would’ve guessed myself but somebody else had done it years ago. There’s a lot of little things that you can do by switching other parts from the hardware store with those machines that they don’t want you to know about.you just have to look around and experiment a bit and of course try to find somebody else who did it on the Internet and wrote about it.

 

[pjones]

Now I regret not telling my a/c installer to add a few ducts into the garage.

In my area that would be agains code. It would pressurize the garage which could force exhaust fumes into your house. It's better to go with a stand alone unit like the window shaker mentioned above. Something small would be better than nothing at all and would probably be all that you need to make it bearable or even comfortable (depending on the size and design of your garage).

The current treat way to do it would be to do a load calculation and size the cooling capacity properly, ultimately it's your choice as to what path you decide to take.

 

[driz]

One of those little Sams Club / Wallymart $100 specials will easily knock Down the heat and humidity in a garage. I don’t know where they get those btu requirements but unless in the Deep South the small units work quite well for us here in Northern NY. We use a 12000 btu to cool the whole bulk of out house with the bedrooms closed off with a 5000 in the bedrooms . It really doesn’t take much as long as your not wanting it in there.

 

[pjones]

The BTU requirements need to be manually calculated, or at least input into a computer manually. Every room is different since they all have different considerations... number and sizes of Windows, single or double pane glass, outside wall vs inside wall, direction that the outside wall is facing, wall thickness/ R Value of insulation, upper or lower floor, slab on grade vs crawl space, heated crawl space? Etc...

In the case of most older garages there was often no insulation on the outside walls and in some cases none in the ceiling. The performance may change quite a bit when used inside a properly insulate space vs a space that has a big uninsulated aluminum door that may be facing the sun turning it into a giant radiant panel. Only the OP has those answers and even still will probably need to contact a professional to make the calculations if they want to be sure that they are getting the correct size unit for their space.

But for a hundred bucks to try a temporary free standing type setup, that would be cheeper than paying someone to load calculate your garage for you so that might be the better option if you choose to do so.

 

[havasu]

I believe those energy calcs are a bunch of BS. I Paid a specialist $850 to calculate my A/C needs. They advised that 4 1/4 ton AC would do the trick. Have you ever seen a 4 1/4 ton A/C unit? My A/C guy said we will upgrade to a 5 ton, which would be more than enough air for me, and be the most inexpensive, but the city inspectors prohibited it. Since the idiot said 4 1/4 ton, the inspector demanded it. Well, BS on that. We cut off the 5 ton labels on the 5 ton unit, had it inspected, and told him it was a 4 1/4 ton unit. It passed!

 

[Diehard]

I believe those energy calcs are a bunch of BS. I Paid a specialist $850 to calculate my A/C needs. They advised that 4 1/4 ton AC would do the trick. Have you ever seen a 4 1/4 ton A/C unit? My A/C guy said we will upgrade to a 5 ton, which would be more than enough air for me, and be the most inexpensive, but the city inspectors prohibited it. Since the idiot said 4 1/4 ton, the inspector demanded it. Well, BS on that. We cut off the 5 ton labels on the 5 ton unit, had it inspected, and told him it was a 4 1/4 ton unit. It passed!

The Inspector obviously doesn't know very much about AC units nor the accuracy of the calculations.

 

[pjones]

I believe those energy calcs are a bunch of BS. I Paid a specialist $850 to calculate my A/C needs. They advised that 4 1/4 ton AC would do the trick. Have you ever seen a 4 1/4 ton A/C unit? My A/C guy said we will upgrade to a 5 ton, which would be more than enough air for me, and be the most inexpensive, but the city inspectors prohibited it. Since the idiot said 4 1/4 ton, the inspector demanded it. Well, BS on that. We cut off the 5 ton labels on the 5 ton unit, had it inspected, and told him it was a 4 1/4 ton unit. It passed!

If the unit has an acceptable run time and is able to handle the load correctly, and the ducts were designed to reflect the load calculations, then I think your issue is more to do with the inspector rather than the load calculation.

The load calculation told you what you needed to know in order to make an informed decision on what size unit to buy, and how much CFM you would need to deliver to each room in order to control the temperature adequately.

 

[Robert L Robaldo]

Actually, you're probably fine with a 5 ton, but there is a very valid reason for NOT putting an oversized unit in.
They will cycle on/off far too quickly and they won't remove the humidity from the house, which can cause a black mold problem which as I'm sure you're aware can lead to serious respiratory issues.
In Florida where I live this can be a very serious problem.

 

[Diehard]

I believe my 3 Ton system is considered oversized for my relatively small 1200 S.F. ranch with basement. I used to get by with a window AC a bit larger than 1/3 that size(14,000 BTU). The window unit did run quite a bit.
My new central air system is a somewhat sophisticated(in my mind) system, which is variable speed, with a control system that says it controls humidity level as well. It can hardly tell it's running some times, due to the low velocities.
Absolutely no problems with humidity levels and we were quite surprised when we got our summer electric bills. The electrical use actually dropped even though we use the central air more then we used the single window unit. Extremely efficient system, although it was, what I thought, an expensive one.