Youth Inside

Bird lady asked:

I have a small air conditioner in the room where my birds are. It is constantly icing up, so I went to inquire about purchasing a new one and having it professionally installed.The one I have now works, but ices up and has to be shut off until the ice melts off .It dosent have a removable cover so I can get in and clean off the coils, which are covered with dirt and I suppose its whats making the unit ice up.I was just wondering if anyone out there, maybe an air conditioner installer, knows if a new unit would give off any odor, that could harm my birds.I know some appliances give off a smell when they are new. Also is there any teflon inside the unit that could heat up(maybe around the motor ? ) and any chance of any gas/freon escaping into the room? This room is very enclosed and not wide open.I remember reading about someone who had a central air conditioner that broke down 2 days after the owner found all his birds dead.Seems some gas had leaked out and killed his birds.
P.S. I did talk to the repair man at the store, but I think he was getting annoyed at all my questions, so I thought I would post it here.Thanks to all !

Randall P asked:

I have a probelm with my air conditioning. I set the temp on my thermostat at around 75-78 degrees. The other night I felt that it was cold in the house so I went to check out the thermostat and it said that it was 69 dgrees and the air conditioner was still running. What are possible causes to this - Broken Thermostat? Broken Air Conditioning Unit? Bad Filters? Thanks

J asked:

We have an air conditioner that is supposed to cool both the second and third floor of our house.

Unfortunately the air conditioner inadvertainly starts to heat our house sometimes when its supposed to be cooling it.

The only way to get it to work right is to turn off the air conditioner and the electricity (fuse) from the circuit-breaker box.

Any ideas what might be causing this? How can I fix this?
It looks fairly old. Have only been living in this home for about 3 years or so. Don’t know too much about it other than the brand name: Trane.

infodistributors asked:

If price was not an issue….would you pay to have an air purifier that completely cleans the air in your home? Can it get rid of your allergies…pollen…dust…even dust mites? Do you have to change the filter all the time or rinse it off once a month? Are you constantly replacing parts or the only time you have to replace anything is if you break it? If you burn popcorn in the microwave…does the smell linger for days with your purifier or is the smell gone in an hour or so?

Darin W asked:

Is it possible to use an air conditioner to heat a pool? It seems like I might be able to use a liquid heat exchanger to cool the hot part of the air conditioning cycle using swimming pool water. Can someone give me an overview of how to build a system like the following myself (or at low cost by requesting the right work to be done by a professional)?

http://www.toad.net/~jsmeenen/pool/
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3976123.html

Thanks in advance! This could be very cool! But I’m also wondering why it seems there are not a lot of people aready doing this — leads me to believe that it might not be worthwhile. Perhaps the air conditioner does not put off enough heat to be useful?

Note: I have also been looking at heat pump systems, which I might end up with, but it would sure be nice if it were possible to modify the existing system instead at a reasonable cost.
To the poster who asks if there is a correlation between air conditioner use and need for pool heat, in my case, yes there is for several months of the year. Even in the hottest months, this could potentially be used to focus all the heat towards the spa, or for household hot water.

Another poster asks if it’s feasible, and there seem to be patents and some devices that do this for either pools or household hot water. Also, stand alone heat pumps are sold for this purpose and they are very similar to what I am proposing here. Air conditioners extract heat from indoors and dissipate it to the air — wasting it. Heat pumps are sold to extract heat from the air to heat the pool — wasting the cold that they generate by dissipating it into the air. Is it possible to have the best of all worlds — nothing wasted + use the existing AC equip through modification?