We have a Lennox system that is 2.5 years old. Turned it on and thought it was working fine because cool air was coming out of the vents. Left it on all day and it only dropped the temp in the house 1 degree. Air coming from the vents was around 56 degrees but it doesn't stay that cold. Filter inside was changed, outside unit has been washed off. Hoses coming from the inside unit pee after it's been turned on for a while. Nothing is showing signs of freezing up inside or out. We have a programmable thermostat that seems to be working all right. Suggestions on what else I can try before calling someone out here? I have fairly easy access to the plenum (sp?) if needed. I'm not sure if the condenser is kicking on our off since I never seem to catch the change in the temp of the air flow until it's too late.

~heather

 

Is this a Heat Pump system with auxilary electric heat?

 

No, not a heat pump system. It's a normal run of the mill natural gas forced air furance system sitting under the plenum (sp?).

 

OK this is pretty straight forward since it is a gas fired furnace it would be to obvious (something you would notice right?) that the furnace was heating at the same time as the AC was cooling so we can cross out accidental heat right? The system has three main parts that must all work at the same time to produce cooling. Lets verify that they are operating
No 1 Furnace Blower fan
No 2 Condensor Fan (outside unit)
No 3 Condensor compressor (outside unit)
If it is cooling then just stops one of the main three parts has probably stopped working, your mission (if you choose to accept it) is to find out which one is failing and then we can go from there with a fix. Note: Former Member is going to take a quess here he thinks that the condensor fan blower motor is bad and runs for say 15 minutes gets hot and locks up when it does this the compressor kicks out on high pressure about two minutes after the condensor fan stops working, the furnace blower motor continues to run. After say five to ten minutes the the coil cools a bit and pressure goes back down the compressor kicks back in repeats cycle over and over prodiucing little to no cooling now eventually the condensor fan motor cools enough to restart maybe 20 to 30 minutes it will run say 15 minutes and lock up again and the vicious compressor killing cycle repeats over and over again untill either the compressor burns up or the overpressure blows a hole in the coil and releases refrigerant into the atmosphere killin numerous penquins LOL. Post quard on the condensor and find out wats up.

 

Well, I wouldn't want to kill penguins now so I will accept the mission. It's not the furance blower fan. I've never heard that stop going while dinking around with it for the last two days. So basically, if I am understanding what I need to do, I need to turn the thing on and go park my butt outside with a good book waiting for something to stop working since I know it's not an inside part. Is there something I should specifically listen for (small bombs going off, penguins screaming)?

 

SOrry to jump in on your thread here but I am having the same problem with the same type of system (NG forced hot air, 2.5 years old). My blower inside is working fine. Since Ive been having problems with the system I took a look at the condenser running yesterday (this is 10 minutes after turning the system on) and the fan was slowing down to a stop. Also the top of the condenser was hot.

Does this mean the condenser fan motor is bad? What can I do to fix this?

Thanks for any help!

Lou

 

if the condensor fan is slowing down and stopping it probably has a bad bearing and the fan motor should be replaced along with the capacitor. You could possibly give it a good oiling and get it to work for a while but the part is probably not that expensive and they are not that hard to swap out, gopher it.

 

It's only 2.5 years old. Call the installing company and have it taken care of via warranty. If you try to DIY it and then call them then they can very well void the warranty.

 

mattison,
the only thing I was worried about with the warranty is that it said that you must demonstrate that you have had annual maintenance performed every year. I havent had that yet. Do you think this will be an issue?

Former Member,
Thanks for the info, if the warranty will not get the work done for me, then I will try that myself. Thanks for you help!

Lou