Hey everybody, new guy here looking for a little advice. My wife and I purchased our first home about 6 months ago and have been enjoying everything minus this nagging A/C problem. Ever since the summer heat has shown up here in Southern California, our A/C system has been acting a little strange. While my wife and I are at work during the day, the house warms up to say 86 degrees or so. When we go set the thermostat to cool, it clicks like it normally would, the fan comes on, but the condenser outside will not start. This has happened a handful of times on very hot days (when we need the AC the most!). The weird thing is that once the air temps cool down outside, the condenser fires up and runs fine like nothing ever happened. My father is a licensed electrician, and checked the power outside at the condenser when it would not run and said it wasn't getting power. The first time this happened, he found 2 blown fuses. Replaced the fuses thinking that was the problem but the unit still wouldn't fire up. Could it be related somehow? He thought there may be an overtemp protection built in to the system somewhere but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me because it was hot but not more that 100 degrees or so outside. Is there anything I can check next time this happens? Anybody have any similar issues? Any advice is appreciated. I can give more info about my system if needed also. Thanks for any help.

Hi all, My mother's AC system has Rheem RBHA-14A00NFAA air handlers. The filter is a 12.75x21x1 washable type. Those don't appear to be very effective and I can't even seem to find replacement ones to buy. I did find these: [URL="http://www.amazon.com/Accumulair-trade-12-75x21x1-Furnace-Filters/dp/B009OPYTMM/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1438051264&sr=8-4&keywords=12.75x21&pebp=1438051286883&perid=0CYTV7Y2G9YZYXXTF7DP"]Accumulair™ Gold 12.75x21x1 (Actual Size) MERV 8 Air Filter/Furnace Filters[/URL]. Will these work OK? The unit is in a 4' crawl space that is not easy to get to (AC retrofit into old house a long time ago), so it involves a lot of squatting, ducking, crawling, etc to get to the filter. My thought is that it will be much easier to just go down with a new filter, swap, discard the old.. rather than go down, take out the filter, crawl out, wash it, crawl back in to install it.