#capacitor

Assessing the Situation It is fairly common for a service technician to come across a failed condenser fan motor in the field. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about really old or fairly new equipment—condenser fan motors sometimes fail. The issue is deciding whether to use an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) or a universal […]

This tech tip is a companion piece to a recent podcast with Kevin Hart from HAVEN. We’ve already had some record-breaking heat here in Florida, and that’s translated to an overwhelming number of calls. We know our HVAC brethren in other areas have been working their tails off all the same.  Going without air conditioning […]

❶ Understand What a Run Capacitor Does The run capacitor provides continuous phase-shifted current to the motor start winding, allowing the motor to run: With the design efficiency In the right direction With the appropriate torque With near “unity” power factor (power factor near 1.0) If the run capacitor is failed, the motor often won't […]

Let's talk about the magic that is inverters and how to test the boards that drive this technology. Inverters play an extremely important role in household appliances, industrial machinery, and the rising popularity of household HVAC systems. Inverters consist of a wide variety of electronic circuitry, and there are many situations in which they need […]

You have seen the C terminal on a dual run capacitor before. You have also seen the C terminal on a compressor. It stands to reason that they would both connect together, right? They don't connect, and they aren't even related, at least not in the way you think. In both cases, the C denotes […]

Knowing how to combine capacitors in series and parallel properly is a great practical field skill to employ when you need to get a customer up and running, but you don't have the exact size. Increasing in size is easy. Just connect in parallel and add the two sizes together. For example, if you needed […]

When testing a run capacitor, many techs pull the leads off and use the capacitance setting on their meter to test the capacitor. On a system that is not running, there isn't anything wrong with this test. However, when you are CONSTANTLY checking capacitors as a matter of regular testing and maintenance, that extra step […]

 In this short episode, Bryan explains the fundamentals of capacitance, focusing on the unit of measure: farads, including micro and pico. Farads are named after scientist Michael Faraday and measure capacitance; one farad represents the capacitance of a capacitor in which one coulomb of charge causes a potential difference of one volt across the […]

This podcast is a high voltage A/C electrical class that Bryan gave to some of the Kalos apprentices. The high voltage journey begins with basic electrical theory. Basically, a difference in charge is needed for electrons to move and generate power. Motors, which are inductive loads, are the greatest users of power that we will […]