Slowdown PTAC fan speed

New PTAC was just installed. It's a Simon-Aire SSZ813H, it has two fan speeds (low & high), both of which are extremely loud. Is there a way to modify how fast the fan blows on the low speed so we can reduce it to make it quieter.

 

Not easily. Have you discussed your concerns with the installer ?

 

Unfortunately these are replacement units in a rental unit so I don't have much say in them. They seem like a decent upgrade in terms of efficiency but the fans sound like an airplane taking off.

 

So doing some research on these. The motor is a Zhongshan Broad-Ocean Motor YDK-060S41819-01

Looks like the motor has 3 speeds (low, med, hi) but the control panel on the PTAC only has low and high. It is possible that the low speed of the motor is not wired into the PTAC controls?

 

Attaching wire diagram, motor wiring label. The cabled coming in from the motor which are going into this plastic connector but on the other side the orange wire is not connected.

Orange wire from motor is Lo speed which is what I'm trying to evaluate if its actually being used by PTAC controller or not.

 

The schematic diagram shows using yellow(medium) as high and orange(low) as low.
However we can see that black(high) and yellow(medium) are actually being used.

You would need to repin the motor socket or the ptac socket.
I suspect that the installer put the pins in the ptac socket when the unit was installed.

Post a face view of the ptac socket.

 

Hey Pete -

I was able to repin the motor socket to connect the orange to yellow wire thats connected to the "Low" speed on the ptac control panel.

This reduced the noise a bit but not by much but I could confirm that the speed difference worked - I used the "Fan Only" mode to see how much the fan contributes to the sound but it actually wasn't much.

It's actually seems like the compressor or something else thats bigger that makes the humming noise. Since its winter, I'm only using this for heat so I'm not sure why anything other than the heater is turning on.

 

There should not be anything else making a loud noise. If it's the compressor or condenser fan.... that's a problem.

I was looking at the schematic...... I see that uses resisitive heating elements. I'm not sure if they'll be ok running on low fan speed. If you feel the air cycle from hot to cool and back to hot...... speed the fan up.

 

Well it was noisy to begin with, the lower fan speed helped a bit with that but there is a general loud hum in the units. These are brand new ones so they really shouldn't have any mechanical issues.

When I turn off heat or cool completely and only run the fan - its really nice and quiet. I can still hear the fan but its not the loud vibrating hum that happens when I turn on heat or cool.

The installer said these units are noisy and thats the major complaint he gets from people so may be this is how they are designed?

 

I looked briefly by the model number. That does not appear to be a heat pump. It does show that it heats using hot water and that there is an available ceramic heater option.

 

I definitely think it had the ceramic heater option. Other than the fan and ceramic heater- nothing else should be on in heat mode right. I'm not sure why its so loud.

 

Here is the sticker from another one of these in my apartment (this model is smaller than the main one but should be the same for the bigger one)

 

I would call them. Their online support is severely lacking.