B&E Air and Heat
Air Conditioning and Heating Service & Repair in Charlotte
704-333-0363
Air Conditioning and Heating Service & Repair in Charlotte
704-333-0363
Home / Maintenance Tips /Website News / Lightning, and Your Central Cooling System
Early Summer in the Charlotte NC area means three things: School is coming to an end, NASCAR fans are coming to Speed Street, and the Summer Thunderstorm Season officially begins.
Over the next 12-16 weeks we call summer, we will see many serious thunderstorms roll through the city and like every other year, we will be flooded with calls from concerned homeowners when their home AC system stops working after a storm passes their home! In some cases, the AC doesn’t work, but the fan runs non-stop, regardless of what you do, recirculating the warm air into your home.!
In this article, we wanted to cover a few safety precautions you can take, as well as a few quick things to check before you call us for AC Repair. While there is no way we can cover every component or equipment check our technicians will need to do after a lightning strike, it’s a good DIY starting point.
1 – Document the Event!
The first thing we suggest you do, is document the storm and all possible damage for insurance purposes. You will want to get a note paper and write down the date and time of the possible lightning strike, as well as your recollection of what happened. If you have a small video camera, like a flip camera, that can come in handy as well.
While this may sound trivial, it can be important for insurance adjusters to have when they review your claim. Remember, the burden of proof is yours.
2 – Check Your Thermostat
Go to your thermostat in the hall or whatever room it’s in. If it is an electric thermostat, make sure the light is lit and the thermostat has power. Turn it on, and set the temperature to trigger the fan unit to come on.
3 – Check the Fan Unit
In split system cooling, you have an indoor fan and an outdoor condenser. After you made sure the thermostat works and is telling the ac system to start, you should hear the fan and/or outdoor condenser start up almost simultaneously. If the fan unit does not start:
4 – Check the Outdoor Condenser
In almost all cases, your outdoor condenser, whether air conditioner or heat pump, is likely to have 2 circuit breakers within a few feet of the unit. Follow the large gray colored electric whip to the panel and check the breakers inside.
Most Insurance companies will not pay for the entire system to be replaced, and want to focus on only the parts that failed. The main issue with this, is that 6 months down the road you could have another failure like a motor or compressor that was damaged during the storm months before, and the Insurance company will not pay twice.
While there is no way to fully test for these types of future breakdowns, when we repair an air conditioner or heat pump repair after a lightning strike, we run it through full load tests for long periods of time, thus minimizing the risk of failure due to the lightning.
July 29th, 2010 at 10:24 am
Is it possible that a lightning strike nearby but not direct can shut down an air conditioner temporarily and later a similar strike turn it back on? Your reply with some details will be most appreciated.
August 7th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Spooky, anything is possible. I would feel the cord that is pluged into the wall receptacle if its hot are warm the wire might have a short. If this is a small window ac unit and pluged into a wall outlet with other outlets in same room, any one of the receptacles could be bad. If you have a dedicated receptacle check the wire for tight connections, better yet call a good Licensed Electrician.
Eddie