Interesting Condenser Fan Issue

Although we suspected that the compressor may have had an issue, we realized that one of the contactors hadn’t been pulled in when we opened up the panel on the condenser. It was a shunt, so we powered up one side and used meter leads to determine that the contactor itself was working fine.

We already checked the capacitor before the video started, and we had 4.9 microfarads on a 5-microfarad capacitor. The compressor drew less than 1 amp (0.6, 0.4, etc.). Our meter picked up 1.1 amps on the fan wire.

All of the components seemed to check out, so we determined that the fan was backfeeding into the compressor because of the shunt.

We disconnected the power, discharged the capacitor, and found the resistance to ground. Overall, we determined that the condenser fan issue was due to the compressor backfeeding as a result of the shunt. So, that’s why the fan was running without the contactor pulled in.