Does your AC still cool the house down to your desire temp fairly quickly? If so, I’d just repalce the fan. We replaced our condenser fan and that gave us about 2-3 years until the AC struggled to keep the house cool and started to run constantly. At that point you have to add coolant in the hopes that it allows the AC to blow cool air which could be anywhere between a day or 2 years depending on the leak. We added coolant once and it lasted us about a year until we replaced the whole thing. It lasted 28 years.
Your AC should take Freon which is the older stuff that is being phased out but still should be available for limited quantities.
Whether the source is there or not, there’s a drip there. It may be slow. If you pull off the damaged panels and put some newspaper on the floor or something you will probably be able to tell where the drip drops from.
At the moment the dishwasher seems like suspect #1. I can’t yet find evidence of water damage around the dishwasher but if I turn on all the other taps in the house, flush toilets, etc. then there is no obvious leaks in any of the pipes. One nice thing about having a drop ceiling in the basement is I can take all the panels off and see pretty much everything. I should be able to pin this down with some more testing.
I think the main cause of the mystery is that the water damage is underneath where the water is pooling (ldo) but that is not actually at the source of the leak.
One silver lining is that I don’t have any gushers! This is a slow leak somewhere, so it needs to be fixed but it’s not an emergency. I’m also glad that it’s happening in the ceiling of the unfinished room in my basement, I don’t really care if drop ceiling panels or drywall in that room have to be taken down and thrown out.
I’ve had a bunch of leaks in my house - my kitchen ceiling is a mess right now. The culprit on multiple occasions was a pinhole leak in a copper pipe. It was a very slow build. Hard to see at first, but the first time I experienced it, I saw a mist. Thinking that was obviously strange, I looked more closely and finally spotted a very thin stream of water coming from a pipe.
My latest problem was a crack in the grout in the master bath shower.
No, that’s what it was. It was right at the soap dish, which made the leak tough to diagnose because it didn’t occur all the time. Plumber checked twice, couldn’t figure it out. I figured out that if I’d be rinsing off in just the wrong spot, I’d cascade water onto the crack at the soap dish, which would then leak down into the kitchen.
I fixed it and poured tons of water there to test it and it was fine. We still haven’t repaired the hole in the kitchen ceiling - it’s been months and it hasn’t leaked. I’m pretty confident I took care of the problem.
Many tiles are not waterproof. Grout is ~never waterproof. The waterproofing goes behind the tile. Your shower is supposed to be 100% completely waterproof before a single tile is set, because water is always going to eventually get behind the tile.
AC can’t keep the house cool during the summer. It’s always been kind of true, but the last couple of summers we’d had a unit stop working etc so I’ve been chalking it up those failures. This summer it still couldn’t keep up so we called the AC guys out here. They took a look and said the AC is ok, coolant levels are ok, the tonnage of the units are ok, etc. We have a two story, tall ceilings, huge windows, all of the McMansion problems. So far the upstairs will get around 80-85 and downstairs will get to 76-80 all while the AC is running constantly.
We have blown in insulation and passive ventilation in the attic. We got solar screens for the large windows on the Western wall. We have radiant barrier under the shingles.
But it still can’t keep up. Doesn’t help that it’s been 100+ for weeks with some days reaching 105+. But who should I call if not the AC guys, and what should I be looking for as my main culprits, or is it even possible to keep the house in the lower to mid 70’s at those temperatures?
I’d get an energy audit. The most likely culprits are going to be air leaks in the building envelope, duct leaks, and poor insulating in non-obvious places. If it’s a generic subdivision from the 90’s or earlier, it’s probably all of the above.
An audit (or assessment) can find these problems with blower doors, duct blasters, thermal imaging, etc. You might even be able to get a subsidy to have one done, or even free in some jurisdictions.
This was persuasive, and I appreciate it. Knowing that we’d at least probably have some warning about the other components failing rather than them failing out of the blue is a good reason to replace the sketchy motor only when everything else seems to be fine. I think we’ll replace the fan motor while being on the lookout for less efficient cooling. Hopefully we’ll get a couple-few years like you did.
I just got a quote for a new central air system that increased 35% from 11 months ago from the same company for the exact same thing line for line. Maybe if new housing starts slow, costs will go down?
Just a new AC unit or full on ductwork installation and all that? If it’s just a new unit the price of those has at least partially skyrocketed because of increased manufacturing costs which have increased because of labor, material, freight and energy costs.
Fixed a pinhole leak in one of my hot water lines yesterday. Half an hour later I found another one right next to it. Went down to fix that today and found 2 more in an adjacent section. Can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.