Hi all,
I have an outdoor Trane XB13 unit and an indoor trane air handler XR80. I came home today to find that the house was very warm. Upon looking for the cause I found that the outdoor unit's (XB13) fan was not turning. I did a little research and found that I could get the fan running again by using a screw driver to give the fan a little push. At that point the fan was running on it's own again. I assume this is caused by a bad capacitor. So I do plan to replace the capacitor.

However, I though if I kept the system running the house would start to cool down. after about an hour it did not seem to be cooling at all and very little air was coming out of the vents. I could hear that the blower was running and the return vents were pulling a little air.

My question is - If the outdoor unit was not running for long enough would that have caused the indoor unit to freeze up? I have not tried to open the unit to check for ice yet but I am now just running the fan with AC off to see if create more air flow.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

Welcome to the forums.

If the fan on the condenser was not spinning.... the compressor would shut down on thermal overload. It could take several hours for it to cool off enough to restart. You should be able to tell when the compressor is running. You can also check the large insulated copper line on the back of the condenser.... it should be ice cold.

If you had a low air flow issue it could be from an iced up coil. A dirty filter as well as low on refrigerant charge will cause a coil to ice up. If you suspect it's iced..... run just the blower and see if there is a heavy condensate flow in the drain.

 

Pete,
Thank you for the feedback. I do have the condenser currently off. It has been off for about 6 hours now. Currently the the insulated copper is not cold. But I am in Florida and it was in the upper 80s when I turned the condenser off 6 hours ago. I might try to run it now to see if it has cooled down enough to restart.

I'm actually not getting any condensation dripping from the drain at all. Maybe I just need to clean off the coils. Tomorrow I'll try to dig into the air handling unit to take a look at the coils. I'll provide an update when I have one.
Thanks again!

 

Hi all,
I thought I'd provide an update this morning and see if anyone had additional suggestions.

Last night I did run the AC about an hour again. I did kickstart the condenser fan. There does seem to be better airflow from the vents in the house (I can feel air blowing). But after an hour the room was not cooling. So I shut off the AC for the remainder of the night. I did order a new Capacitor for the condenser.

This morning I have started the AC once again. I still kickstart the condenser fan each time I start the AC. This morning it has been running for about 30 min but the temp has not dropped (currently the thermostat shows a room temp of 79 and the AC temp is set to 74).

As a note - we do have 2 AC units for the house. There are a couple things that I have noticed on the condenser (outside) when I compare the two while both are running.
1. the working condenser does have an insulated copper pipe that is cold and some condensation right where the insulation stops. On the non-working unit the pipe is not cold. Is that an indication of a specific problem? Or does it take time to cool down?
2. The working condenser (while the fan is spinning) blows out much warmer air than the non-working condenser. Or it seems like there is no heat being created within the non-working condenser that is being blown out by the fan.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

 

Do you have a duel or single capacitor?
If it’s a duel the compressor side could be faulty as well.
Or the compressor overload may be stuck open.
Time to check things with your meter. This will involve working with live high voltage.

 

roughneck,
Thank you. I do have a dual capacitor. It is definitely bulging and needs to be replaced. Maybe when I get the replacement tomorrow I can see if the new one fixes both the fan and the compressor. I was not aware that the capacitor also helped to run or start the compressor so I'm hopeful that is the issue. I'm comfortable with electrical testing but might wait to see if the replacement gets me back up and running.

 

Both the fan and compressor require a cap. Some units use two caps instead of a dual cap.
Worth a shot replacing it first.

Typically when the starting cap portion of the compressor is at fault..... you'll hear the compressor humming pretty loudly before it shuts down.

 

I received the new capacitor today and installed it. Everything is now working as it should. Thank you all for the help.

 

Good job. Thanks for letting us know how you made out.