Location
15 miles west of Tampa, Florida

That puts you in Clearwater or Dunedin? Right?

I grew up in Oldsmar. Just down the road from Tampa Bay Downs.

 

A little farther south. Unincorporated area between Seminole and Pinellas Park.
I wasn't born here, but I like it a LOT better than Indianapolis!
July and August suck, but not as bad as 6 months of snow and mud, fixing your car at 20 degrees F, and "you will die if the furnace quits working".
I call living in Florida the same as being on permanent vacation.
After all, vacation is an attitude.
Vacation is, "I don't do anything I don't really want to do" (except maybe go to the dentist or mow the lawn in July).
Dude, I'm in Fat City, and I have been for 40 years.

 

A little farther south. Unincorporated area between Seminole and Pinellas Park.
I wasn't born here, but I like it a LOT better than Indianapolis!
July and August suck, but not as bad as 6 months of snow and mud, fixing your car at 20 degrees F, and "you will die if the furnace quits working".
I call living in Florida the same as being on permanent vacation.
After all, vacation is an attitude.
Vacation is, "I don't do anything I don't really want to do" (except maybe go to the dentist or mow the lawn in July).
Dude, I'm in Fat City, and I have been for 40 years.

I left the Gulf Coast at 18 to go down to the University of Miami. I kinda fell in love with South Florida and pitched my tent here. The scenery is better (ever been to Sobe?), and there is not as much traffic as there is in your area.

Regardless, I wouldn't leave Florida now for the world.

BTW, I was on Clearwater Beach recently. I love what they did with the place.

 

I was stationed in the panhandle (Panama City) and found that the weather couldn't be beat for about two or three months in the spring and about two or three months in the fall. I wasn't surprised that the summer sucked big time, but I was sure surprised at how hellishly miserable the winter was, even though the coldest it got the entire time I was there was 28°F.

I'm from Colorado and the humidity here is very low almost all the time. So roughly between 40°F and 90°F is shirtsleeve weather. Up until about 105°F (which is VERY rare), it is simply uncomfortably warm and not generally dangerous for most people. Down to about 20°F it is jacket weather and you will see people running in shorts. In 1983 I walked three miles to work at -28°F with a couple layers of clothing and was quite comfortable. At Tyndall just three years later I walked three miles on the flight line at 45°F with a lot more clothes on and was bordering on hypothermia when I got back to the shop. I could not believe how the humidity just penetrates everything you're wearing. At the other end, when it got above about 90°F they started curtailing activities on the flightline because it was becoming actively dangerous from a heat exhaustion and heat stroke concern because your sweat doesn't evaporate -- in fact the moisture in the air condenses on you and dumps its latent heat into you.

Made me really appreciate Colorado. The snow can be a bear, but it seldom sticks around more than a week or two (at least once you are out of the foothills).

 

A lot of my Family live in Florida, I couldn't handle all the humidity.

 

One word: acclimatization

When I grew up in Indianapolis, we thought summers near 80 F were brutal. Later, I went from Florida to California. At the first sign of getting warm, my body would respond with the drenching sweat that is Florida summers. The dry air would hit me at a dew point of about 59 F and I would get chills and start sneezing. I had to wear a trench coat when I was outdoors most of the time for the first year to avoid the dry breezes. Then I got used to it. California dry is good! A few years later, I moved back to Florida and my body adapted to Florida.

I still think drenching sweat is a bad thing, and it gets annoying in the summer, but I'd rather sweat in the summer than have cold, wet, shoes and conditions that make it impossible to work outdoors for several months of the year. (I can't understand why people live in Canada.) Now, my body thinks 70 F is a bit chilly, 80 F is pleasant, and 90 F is where I start sweating if I do any outdoor activity except holding still.

Remember Indianapolis, where 80 was brutal heat? In Florida, 80 is just about warm enough to be comfortable. You get acclimatized.

ps to metalmann: You can have the spot I left open in Indiana

 

It's said 106 on my car thermometer the past few days, and humidity has been getting up over 80%. Sucks the life out of you. I'm thankful for a car with working a/c.

 

It's said 106 on my car thermometer the past few days,

Inside the car or outside the car?

In Florida, 125 inside the car (when it is parked in the sun with the windows closed) is normal for summer. No worries about bugs or critters that get into the car, they will be roasted dead in one day.

 

Inside the car or outside the car?

In Florida, 125 inside the car (when it is parked in the sun with the windows closed) is normal for summer. No worries about bugs or critters that get into the car, they will be roasted dead in one day.

Outside temp. I don't have an inside thermometer, but if I did, I wouldn't be surprised if it read 140 or higher.

 

Try it. It's interesting.
As an air conditioner fixer, I always have at least 3 thermometers. A bad day is 135 in the car. Then again, as an air conditioner fixer, my car air conditioner works really well!

 

Try it. It's interesting.
As an air conditioner fixer...

Number Twelve,
Do you focus on commercial, residential or automotive?

Do the actual compressor ever wear out or are they indestructible? I am asking because I only seem to hear about compressor motors, leaks in tubing (bad seals) or electrical issues.

Just wondering because I recently met a guy who does R&D on compressor oils (mixed with the Freon). It surprised me because I didn't know it was a problem.

 

I mostly do residential central air conditioners, but I can do window shakers, cars, and commercial coolers. Refrigerators and small freezers are just too darn picky for the Freon equipment I have. Still, I fix their electrical problems. I did a large post on a faulty GE refrigerator design if I remember correctly. "Let's put a microprocessor in it! Oh darn, I don't know how to design for a microprocessor to interface with the outside world. Well, we're going to do it anyway."

Todays compressors are pretty good. You gotta believe that when you see your 10 year warranty on it. Small compressors have the motor inside the case with the compressor. Motor fail = compressor fail. Most problems are electrical or stopped up water drains. I have seen a dramatic improvement in the number of Freon leaks in the last 10 years, too. The installers must be getting better!

Most people don't know that oil travels with the Freon, so it has to be soluble in the Freon it is installed with. Think about it: If a compressor runs for 10 years, how much oil accidentally gets past the pistons? Way more than the quart that's in the crankcase! There is a whole sub-section about how to be sure the oil gets back to the compressor crankcase.

 

I've tried working on automotive system a handful of times. 5 out of 6 attempts on 3 different cars were abysmal failures. The other one came out "ok". Would have been sufficient for summers somewhere other than Houston, but still uncomfortable here. Then a couple months later my sister crashed that truck and severed the condenser. I took that as a sign and ripped the "a/c technician" badge off my "handyman of the family" hat. When they come to me with a/c issues I turn them around before they can even finish the description "my car is making like a grrrr....wawa....grrr noise and the a/c is like" .. "STOP. Take it to a a/c shop." I have all the gauges and hoses and vacuum pump and I snarl at them every time I see them hanging in the corner. Hundreds of dollars wasted, so many hours driving around in a hot box, and so much frustration....well I guess I'm just being dramatic now. Moral of the story, if you're good at repairing a/c systems then my hat is off to you. People probably don't appreciate your skill as much as they should.

 

True. In general, people don't know how an air conditioner works, but it's a lot like electronics in that the critical activity is not visible to humans. You have to measure and derive what's wrong. Feeling the temperature of the pipes is a clue, like feeling the temperature of a resistor, but measuring and calculating and knowing from that what is going on in places you can't see is the bottom line.

When you are designing an air conditioning system, there are lots of things people don't even realize go into it. The size of the ducts determine the quantity of air flow, the size of the registers or delivery grills determines how far the air is thrown across the room, where you put the grilles determines the return path of the air and whether it diffuses into the whole room, the slope of the pipes determines the oil return to the compressor, even a condensate drain can be done wrong! Then there is the control voltage wiring, the power voltage wiring, the sound levels, the humidity ratio setting, fan tip velocity, horsepower calculations...

Getting ad nauseum? It certainly is!

 

So, what can be done to minimize the hysteresis noise my central unit makes? It drives me crazy.

 

So, what can be done to minimize the hysteresis noise my central unit makes? It drives me crazy.

Go to the range once/week and shoot with no hearing protection.

Oh, you must have been asking #12, my bad.

 

So, what can be done to minimize the hysteresis noise my central unit makes? It drives me crazy.

I suppose you could try my solution, but it might be a tad difficult to scale up...

Oh, and platinum is expensive.


EDIT: Gosh darnit! Wrong thread!

 

Hysteresis noise in an air conditioner does not make sense to me. Are you asking about the muffler bearings or the Johnson rod?

 

Go to the range once/week and shoot with no hearing protection.

Oh, you must have been asking #12, my bad.

Yeah, then the tinnitus drowns out the wah, wah, wah, wah, of the AC.

 

Hysteresis noise in an air conditioner does not make sense to me. Are you asking about the muffler bearings or the Johnson rod?

You know...when one motor zero beats with another and you get that wah, wah, wah, effect.