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Old 01-11-19, 01:27 PM   #3
AC_Hacker
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stevehull View Post
My son had a similar problem and we found out the unit had a small leak at the flare (sniffer found it). So we sucked gas out, re did flare (my fault as I was not as careful as I should have been originally) and filled using weight not psi.
Steve
Thanks Steve for your response,

I think my problem may be different than the one you described:

* There may be a slow leak as you suggested, but I set up the unit very carefully seven years ago. Of course this doesn't mean that it isn't leaking now.

* My unit is not blinking red all the time. It may go several days or even weeks before the pattern re-appears. Then if I shut it completely down for some short period of time, turn it back on, it works exactly as expected.

* It's the intermittent aspect that has me stumped.

I was previously experiencing a gradual decline in performance, but then discovered that the fins on the outdoor unit were seriously blocked, and I used foaming fin cleaner (really works well) and water jets from inside the unit, squirting out. Ended up with shiny clean and clear fins. That completely remedied the performance decline.

I do all the standard vacuuming of the fins on the indoor unit on a regular basis. I also used high pressure air to blow out any dust from the fins. Almost none came out which made me wonder if either I had done a spectacular job all along, or my pressurized air was not getting to places that really needed cleaning.

Right now I am suspecting that the fins of the indoor unit needs cleaning.

Here are a couple of videos of that process. The first video is thorough, the second video is more rigorous, and features a "muck collector" that could be easily fabricated by any determined Ecorenovator.

FIRST VIDEO:



SECOND VIDEO:



...and another which seems to be a training video for a mini-split cleaning company, to fill in any gaps that an Ecorenovator might have:



Your thoughts??

-AC_Hacker
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