Ge, trane, and manurope are examples that do not usually take this kit. Before replacing the compressor altogether, which can get expensive, one may invest in a hard start kit instead. Compressor saver hard start capacitor model csr u3 installation cost. I have had many bad experiences with supco hard start kits. The operation of the hard start kit is fairly simple.
The hard start kit is comprised of a large capacitor and a special relay. I need to buy a few hard start kits for my work. This is a hard start kit:. This efficiency reduces heat and wear on the compressor and other important ac components. Some air conditioning compressor brands do not usually need a hard start kit.
Why install a hard start kit? In fact, with a hard start kit, the electrical efficiency of the startup process is much higher than without one. I asked him how much it would cost. Try installing a hard start kit. Prolongs the life of the ac. Install an easystart soft start device. A hard start kit is a start capacitor. An air conditioner's compressor is highly mechanical and it is expensive to replace. The compressor manufacturer or oem will almost always use a potential starting relay for this purpose.
Here are some reasons why it is advantageous to install a hard start kit: They almost never work for me and have to replace them. Engine Diagram W5 Nissan. Pin on Diy electrical.
Air Conditioning Convierta en un maestro de aire. How to hook up hard start kit on compressor Hvac. Your email address will not be published.
Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. In the picture, it shows its for 3. First thing I did was turn the control panels to the "off" position so that the air conditioning unit wouldn't be running when I disconnected the power in the next step. Our house not only has two air conditioning units, but one unit feeds two independent "zones".
Thus I had to make sure both control panels were set to the "off" position. There's volts going to this thing and I didn't want to get bit by it. I've taken V a few times when I was too lazy to cut the breaker when working on an outlet or light socket in my home. Plus, these things are so expensive I definitely wouldn't want to accidentally cross the streams and blow an expensive part of the unit out. So this is a job where I don't dare be lazy in any aspect.
I made sure to cut the power, and even go so far as checking the unit with a voltmeter to verify the power was cut. Next, I needed to remove the panel door on the ac condenser unit's power box. The panel door of my unit came off by removing two screws. Installing the gravity sensor takes another tidbit of knowledge. The relay is a special kind of relay that uses gravity as part of its operation.
So I had to be sure to mount the gravity in the correct orientation. For my Hard Start Kit, per the instructions that came with it, the proper orientation was for the screw mount hole to be on the top. An arrow in the picture below points to the mounting screw holding the gravity relay in its correct orientation. The Hard Start Kit came with a mounting zip tie that I used to mount the capacitor to the second available upgrade screw in the box. The mounting zip tie is just like a regular zip tie but with an extra screw hole at the end.
The capacitor should be mounted vertically with its top leads at least an inch from any other conductive system elements. I'm not sure if the run capacitor the silver verticle tube on the right side of the above picture has a bleed resistor in its circuit or not, but I made sure the capacitor was discharged. If there were a charge somehow stored on the capacitor it would be a DC type voltage, so I simply set my voltmeter to measure DC and put one lead on the common terminal and then probed each of the 3 the run capacitor's top poles with the other lead.
I did not find a voltage, but if there had a residual voltage left on the capacitor, I would have figure out how to properly discharge it. Likely just having the meter on the capacitor for a while would discharge it, as a Voltmeter actually uses a very high resistance in parallel with the circuit to read the voltage. Next I needed to connect up the wires of the Hard Start Kit to the air conditioners parts. I did this following the diagram that comes with the Hard Start Kit.
First, I connected the Red and Yellow wires to their matching color wires on the top of the run capacitor. I'm not sure if the wires are standardized but I had two forms of verification. Second, as further verification, you'll see on the directions that the run capacitor has different amount of connectors for each connection type.
The "c" has 4 connectors red wire and the Herm has 3 connectors yellow striped wire. The "common" black wire gets connected to a common terminal. There just happens to be a few free connection posts available on the relay for this purpose. But you have to be careful to get the right connection post.
This was another potential pitfall as I didn't initially see the available posts on the top of the relay. Make sure there are no loose wires or exposed metal that could cause a short circuit.
He said it all looked good. With the confidence of having verification that everything looked properly installed, I next put the circuit breaker back in position and went inside and set the control panel for the unit to cool with a temperature that would cause the unit to turn on.
Now, just because I installed this thing, doesn't mean its actually going to make my system start-up more efficient and therefore increase the life of my compressor. I needed to measure the "inrush" current and for that, I needed a special meter; one that specifically can measure "inrush" current.
Using the "max" capture that's available on most clamp multimeters is not good enough you'll need to google this to understand why. To measure the inrush current, I needed to turn off my home air conditioner and set the meter to the alternating current reading the "A" with a single squiggly line above it and clamp the meter over the black power wire that runs to the compressor.
Then I pressed the yellow "SEL" button to lock it in the inrush mode. The meter then sat and waited for the inrush current that happened when I turned the air conditioning unit back on. The little arrow shows the hole in the casing where the wire goes in to the compressor. The framed image in the lower right is to help give a perspective of where the meter is within the outer control panel. My unit has a label on the outside of the compressor that tells me what the max inrush current should be.
I made sure to take a few measurements before I added my Hard Start kit to see get a baseline reading so I could understand the current status of my start-up current. Then I made sure to take a few measurements after.
My start-up current was around Amps before adding the kit and around 96 Amps after adding the hard start kit. So my kit brought my aging system back well within proper operating specifications. Also note, that I didn't turn the AC unit on and off by unplugging and plugging in the circuit breaker shown above. I don't like doing that because if you aren't perfect in putting the breaker back in each time, you can cause unnecessary voltage spikes and potentially damage your unit.
My process for the testing phase was to let the system handle turning the compressor on and off. I turned the air off at the temp sensor control in the house.
Then I went outside and set the meter up. Then I went back inside and turned the air on. This was a bit cumbersome and sometimes I got locked out and had to wait for 5 minutes a safety mechanism for the unit to start back up, but doing it this way helped me keep peace of mind that I wouldn't blow my compressor out.
As I usually do, I like to do the math to see if doing the project myself was worth my time. In total, I spent about 3. So 4 hours total. This endeavor was highly worth my time! In savings, I justified putting my valuable time towards researching the subject of "hard start kit" operation and installation.
I was able to safely and properly install a Hard Start Kit on my air conditioning system. I have seen technicians using an ammeter to show that the start-up current draw is significantly reduced by installing a hard start kit. However, I haven't yet found any actual research papers or data backed proof that proves using a Hard Start Kit does in fact empirically extend the life of an air conditioner's condenser. One of those things where someone comes up with a theory, and a bunch of people buy into it because they make money on it think Wall Street.
So I chose to move forward with the install. Thanks for the comment George The only way a capacitor can hold a charge with the power removed from the circuit is if there is a static voltage difference; which means the capacitor is in a DC type of state. If there is a charge stored on a capacitor, it will need to be read in a DC setting on a voltmeter. You can't store alternating current.
Regardless, I clarified that section If the capacitor was holding a charge, the voltmeter in DC would show a reading, but would actually discharge it as it was reading it. If testing in AC mode, it won't show anything and will just discharge the capacitor. Either way, the goal of safely removing any potential residual charge would be accomplished.
Hello Terry Caliendo! Your article is very informative and appreciated very much. This really freaked out my daughter, thinking that this should be done instead of "recommended". Nevertheless, the gouging that this industry does is ridiculous.
My questions for you are: 1 have you installed a Dual Circuit Phase Shifter? Sorry about the lengthy comments but I would appreciate your comments.
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