Be a Man and Save $500

I had an annoying experience last night, and it goes to show that no woman should marry a millennial, because they can’t do anything.

Air conditioning is what made life in Florida possible. I’m not sure what people did here, or why they ever entered the state, before air conditioning. I believe the moon landings took place, but I have doubts about all those photos of people living in Florida before air conditioning. I don’t see how a person could have stood it.

Of course, I have central air. For some reason, the people who built the house put two units in it, and each one has a condenser in the yard. This is the thing that compresses the refrigerant and sends it into the house.

For reasons known only to AC manufacturers, condensers are made to fail. You may possibly get 15 years out of a condenser, but you can also expect it to fail at least once during its life due to the low quality of one important part: the run capacitor.

Residential AC condensers have single-phase condenser motors, and that means each one has to have a big capacitor that makes the motors run. Manufacturers have two choices when specifying capacitors for their products: American-made capacitors likely to last as long as the condensers, or Chinese garbage that blows out every third July on a Friday night when it’s 105 degrees outside. This is just how life is.

The Chinese-cap blowout phenomenon is particularly likely to happen if you’re over 80 years old, bedridden, and unable to open a window.

In Florida, where the weather is warm in the winter, it is also likely that the capacitor will fail late on New Year’s Eve or Christmas Day.

I don’t know what a good capacitor costs a manufacturer, but I can buy one for $24, so it’s not like they’re prohibitively expensive and stuffed with caviar. If I can get one for $24, Rheem and Carrier must be able to get them for half of that. Nonetheless, they keep using Chinese caps that blow up.

Last night I noticed that the temperature in our master bedroom (“master,” wokies) was 78°. Way too hot. My wife hadn’t noticed, probably because she’s a woman, and women are cold-blooded, like frogs. I don’t know how long it had been that high. A respiratory bug hit our house a while back, so I started sleeping in the nursery. Then when I was ready to go back to the MASTER bedroom, my wife caught something else. I was about to resume normal sleeping arrangements when I saw the temperature problem.

Of course, I went to A.I., and after a lot of fiddling with my system’s silly computer, I confirmed that the capacitor was probably to blame. I went outside with a light strapped to my head to check.

I pulled the cover plate off the electronics area on the unit, and long story short, there was a big smear of carbon on the sheet metal inside, and one of the wires had melted completely off the spade connector on the capacitor.

Big problem, right? Time to call an air conditioning outfit, have them come out, pay them overtime, and be charged $250 for the new $6 Chinese capacitor, labor not included.

No, that’s what happens to millennial men who shave their chests and wear women’s underwear. I am old, so I know stuff.

By the way, the numbers I quote are not fantasy. You may have to shell out $500 to get a cheap part replaced with another one that is just as bad.

I went to the kitchen, where I kept two fresh Amrad capacitors. I grabbed one. I went to the shop and got crimpers, pliers, and the correct size female spade connector, which, of course, I had. I pulled the disconnect. I cut off the burned part of the wire, installed the connector, replaced the capacitor, and turned the unit back on.

Total cost: price of one capacitor and one spade connector.

Afterward, I went to Amazon and ordered a new Amrad. It cost $31 this time, but that was the price of speedy delivery. I didn’t want to be empty-handed if the new capacitor blew.

The old capacitor, of course, has “China” stamped on it, but there is no brand name. Even the Chinese don’t want credit for this junk.

So what is an Amrad capacitor?

Amrad Engineering is a company in Palm Coast, Florida. They’re the people who make the good capacitors. I bought mine not long ago when I was getting my system up to speed, maintenance-wise.

I had both units checked over this summer, and I even bought a membership for VIP service which includes two checkups a year, but not being stupid or a millennial, I realized there was no way the AC people were going to replace my still-running Chinese capacitors, so I bought some and set them aside. A millennial wouldn’t have known an AC system needed maintenance, he wouldn’t have known what a capacitor was, he wouldn’t have signed up for semiannual visits, and he definitely would not have heard of Amrad.

I was going to change the capacitors in both of my condensers right away, but I put it off, so I ended up out in the yard at night.

My advice: find out what size run caps your system uses, today, and buy an Amrad. Also, make sure you have the correct nut drivers to remove your access panel. The brilliant minds at Carrier made my condenser with both 1/4″ and 5/16″ screws, just to make sure more customers would have to call repairmen.

It only takes 10 minutes to change a capacitor, and smart people dump the Chinese originals as soon as their condensers are installed. You should do that. You should buy one capacitor to install today, plus one to install later in case it blows.

It’s hard to believe AC manufacturers are sufficiently incompetent or cheap to use Chinese capacitors, but they do, so govern yourself accordingly. And if you’re a millennial male (XY, not just confused), stop shaving your chest and buy some tools.

As for the ladies (XX, not just confused), I guess it’s not practical to tell you to marry old men who actually know how to do things, so maybe someone needs to devise some kind of test so you can weed out the young men who are even more feminine than you are.