How To Install A Hard Start Kit

A/C Compressor is Mechanical

An air conditioning unit's compressor, like anything mechanical, has a express lifespan. Later a given amount of use, the mechanical parts volition habiliment out and subsequently need to be replaced. An air conditioner'south compressor is highly mechanical and it is expensive to supplant.

Why Install A Hard Kickoff Kit?

A "Hard Outset" kit can be used to (supposedly) increase the life span of an air conditioner'due south compressor. The "Difficult Start" kit is comprised of a large capacitor and a special relay.

The operation of the Difficult Start kit is fairly simple. The relay adds the capacitor's capacitance to the excursion when the compressor is outset turned on. After the compressor starts running, the relay opens up and therefore drops the extra capacitance out of the arrangement.

The extra capacitance (unlike what a technician may tell y'all) doesn't give the compressor whatsoever extra voltage, current or power at start-upward. What it does do (which any electrical engineer can confirm) is information technology changes the phase of the voltage versus the current and this leads to extra start-up torque, which reduces the habiliment and tear on the compressor. The "Difficult Start" kit therefore makes the get-go-upward phase of the compressor operation more efficient.

Previous Article

I previously wrote a blog mail service about how I learned about a Hard Starting time Kit and how A/C companies overcharge for the installation of a Hard Start Kit.

Non being able to be ripped off by such a large caste ($410 for 15 minutes of labor), I decided to install i myself.

My Background

My background: I am non trained in HVAC. I'm a technical guy and every once in a while, I like to use that Electrical Engineering college degree I paid and then much to earn dorsum in the early 2000'due south (I need to write an article well-nigh how I got fired before showing up to the start solar day of work back in the dot-com crash).

In this article, I volition explain everything I learned and how I installed a Hard Outset Kit on my own ac unit.

** Alert **

NOTE: You lot SHOULD NOT Effort TO INSTALL A HARD Commencement KIT ON YOUR OWN. Rent A Professional TO DO Information technology FOR YOU. WHAT FOLLOWS IS STRICKLY FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. THE INSTRUCTIONS MAY Not Exist COMPREHENSIVE AND THEY MAY HAVE ERRORS THAT COULD GET YOU SERIOUSLY INJURED AND/OR Cause Y'all TO Exercise All-encompassing AND EXPENSIVE Impairment TO YOUR A/C Unit of measurement. THIS DOCUMENTATION IS Non MEANT TO BE USED By ANYONE, ESPECIALLY SOMEONE WITHOUT FORMAL TRAINING IN HEATING/COOLING SYSTEMS.

With that liability clause out of the way, here is my documentation:

Ordering a Hard Start Kit

Interestingly I had to acquire about getting this first step right from a technician I met, I didn't run into or read any word about information technology when doing my own research.

I didn't realize there are different size Difficult Kickoff Kits and you need to purchase a kit that matches the tonnage of your a/c unit. Again, installing a Hard Showtime Kit is about creating the correct conditions to maximize commencement-up efficiency for your air-conditioning unit compressor. Using the wrong sized kit likely wouldn't help increase the life of my unit of measurement, and would more likely actually shorten its life past reducing efficiency.

Determine A/C Unit Tonnage

Information technology took just a quick Google search for "how to find the tonnage of an ac unit" and I found a "ton" (pun intended) of articles on how to determine the tonnage of my unit.

Buy Right Size Hard Start Kit

My compressor is a 3.v ton unit. Then I purchased the v-2-i Compressor Saver Hard Outset Capacitor Model CSR U2 which corresponds to my air conditioner's tonnage. In the picture, it shows its for 3.5 -4-5 Ton Units.

Compressor Saver Difficult Start Capacitor Model CSR U2 by Five Two One Inc

Links to Hard Kickoff Kits

• Hard Beginning Kit for 1 to 3 Ton Units
• Difficult First Kit for 3.v to v Ton Units
• Hard Beginning Kit for iv to v Ton Units

Install the Hard Offset Kit

After I received my Difficult Start Kit, information technology was time to begin the installation.

Turn the Control Panels to Off

First affair I did was turn the control panels to the "off" position so that the air-conditioning unit wouldn't be running when I asunder the ability in the next step. Our house not but has ii air workout units, but i unit feeds two independent "zones". Thus I had to brand sure both command panels were set to the "off" position.

Disconnect the Power

Before opening up my a/c unit's ability box I made sure to disconnect the power to the unit of measurement. There's 240 volts going to this thing and I didn't want to get bit past it.

I've taken 120V a few times when I was too lazy to cut the breaker when working on an outlet or light socket in my abode. 120V isn't actually too bad of a bite, but I'd exist very afraid to take double that. Plus, these things are so expensive I definitely wouldn't want to accidentally cross the streams and blow an expensive part of the unit out. And then this is a chore where I don't cartel be lazy in whatsoever aspect. I made certain to cut the ability, and even go so far every bit checking the unit with a voltmeter to verify the power was cut.

On my organisation in that location is a breaker on the wall right adjacent to the unit.

All I had to practise was open up the billow box and pull the breaker vial its handle directly out.

Open up Up the Power Console

Adjacent, I needed to remove the panel door on the air conditioning condenser unit's power box. The panel door of my unit came off by removing two screws.

And Low AND BEHOLD there'south already two mounting screws only waiting to be used for an upgrade such as adding a Difficult Start Kit.

Mount the Difficult Start Kit Components

Next, I mounted the capacitor and relay that make up the "Hard Start Kit" inside the a/c condenser unit's power panel box.

Correctly Mount the Gravity Relay

Installing the gravity sensor takes some other tidbit of knowledge. The relay is a special kind of relay that uses gravity as part of its operation. Then I had to exist sure to mount the gravity in the right orientation. For my Hard Get-go Kit, per the instructions that came with it, the proper orientation was for the screw mount pigsty to be on the top.

An arrow in the film beneath points to the mounting spiral holding the gravity relay in its correct orientation.

Correctly Mountain the Difficult Commencement Kit Capacitor

The Difficult Kickoff Kit came with a mounting zip tie that I used to mountain the capacitor to the second available upgrade screw in the box. The mounting null tie is just like a regular zip tie merely with an extra screw hole at the end.

The capacitor should be mounted vertically with its top leads at least an inch from any other conductive system elements.

You tin can see the zip tie pointed to with an arrow in the movie above.

Verify Run Capacitor Is Discharged

I'one thousand not sure if the run capacitor (the silver verticle tube on the correct side of the above picture) has a bleed resistor in its circuit or not, but I made sure the capacitor was discharged. Remember, the A/C ability to the unit of measurement has been removed at this betoken. If there were a charge somehow stored on the capacitor it would be a DC type voltage, so I simply set my voltmeter to measure out DC and put one atomic number 82 on the common terminal and then probed each of the 3 the run capacitor's meridian poles with the other lead. I did not find a voltage, merely if there had a residual voltage left on the capacitor, I would have effigy out how to properly discharge it. Probable just having the meter on the capacitor for a while would discharge it, every bit a Voltmeter really uses a very high resistance in parallel with the excursion to read the voltage.

<I didn't have a moving-picture show of this. I hope to add together it soon.>

Connect the Difficult Start Kit Wires

Next I needed to connect up the wires of the Hard Start Kit to the air conditioners parts. I did this following the diagram that comes with the Hard Start Kit.

Connect the Difficult Start Kit Red and Yellow Wires

Commencement, I connected the Red and Xanthous wires to their matching color wires on the top of the run capacitor. I'm not sure if the wires are standardized just I had two forms of verification. First, I sent a picture to my new A/C senior tech friend and he confirmed that yes, I should connect the matching colors.

Second, as further verification, y'all'll meet on the directions that the run capacitor has unlike amount of connectors for each connection type. The "c" has 4 connectors (blood-red wire) and the Herm has 3 connectors (yellow striped wire).

Connect the Difficult Start Kit Common / Black Wire

The "mutual" black wire gets continued to a common terminal. There merely happens to be a few free connection posts bachelor on the relay for this purpose. But you accept to be conscientious to get the right connection mail.

This was another potential pitfall as I didn't initially see the available posts on the top of the relay. I did run across the black wire most the bottom left-mitt side of the relay with an open up mail adjacent to it (lower left mitt "Ten" in the picture to a higher place) and asked my a/c buddy if I could use that, figuring it might be a "common" terminal because of the blackness wire. He replied that would be a huge mistake and I would accident my system if I did so, every bit that post is for the low voltage circuitry which controls the on/off state of that principal power relay.

Verify The Installation

Make sure in that location are no loose wires or exposed metal that could cause a short excursion. With everything continued, I took some pictures and sent them to my a/c senior tech friend. He said it all looked good.

Test The Installation

With the confidence of having verification that everything looked properly installed, I adjacent put the excursion billow dorsum in position and went within and set the control panel for the unit to absurd with a temperature that would cause the unit to turn on.

The unit fired up and everything worked just fine. Woohooo!!!!

Now, only because I installed this affair, doesn't mean its actually going to make my organization start-up more than efficient and therefore increase the life of my compressor. I needed to have a measurement to verify that the device IS Actually helping my organization.

I needed to measure out the "inrush" electric current and for that, I needed a special meter; i that specifically can measure "inrush" electric current. Using the "max" capture that's available on most clench multimeters is not good enough (you'll demand to google this to empathize why).

The least expensive clench multimeter I could detect that had the specific capability of measuring A/C inrush current was the Mastech MS2108 Truthful-RMS AC/DC Clamp Meter with Inrush Current Measurement which was about $60 when I purchased it.

If I really wanted to get the best of the best, then I would have purchased the Fluke 381 clench meter, but at $500, that would take eaten upwardly all the money I'd be saving by doing this task myself.

To measure out the inrush current, I needed to turn off my home air conditioner and fix the meter to the alternating current reading (the "A" with a unmarried squiggly line above it) and clench the meter over the blackness power wire that runs to the compressor. Then I pressed the yellow "SEL" push button to lock information technology in the inrush mode. The meter then sat and waited for the inrush current that happened when I turned the air conditioning unit of measurement back on.

Here is a picture of the meter I bought clamped on the black power wire.

Find the two bigger scarlet arrows showing the heavy gauge black wire going through the meter A/C clamp probe. The footling arrow shows the pigsty in the casing where the wire goes in to the compressor. The framed prototype in the lower right is to help give a perspective of where the meter is inside the outer control panel.

My unit of measurement has a label on the exterior of the compressor that tells me what the max inrush current should be. Its the"LRA" (Locked Rotor Amps) specification.

I fabricated certain to take a few measurements before I added my Hard Showtime kit to meet get a baseline reading so I could understand the current status of my get-go-up electric current. And then I made sure to take a few measurements afterward.

My first-up current was around 132 Amps before adding the kit and around 96 Amps after calculation the hard starting time kit. And so my kit brought my aging system back well inside proper operating specifications.

Also annotation, that I didn't turn the Ac unit of measurement on and off by unplugging and plugging in the circuit breaker (shown above). I don't like doing that because if you aren't perfect in putting the breaker back in each time, you lot can cause unnecessary voltage spikes and potentially damage your unit.

My process for the testing stage was to permit the system handle turning the compressor on and off. I turned the air off at the temp sensor control in the house. Then I went outside and set the meter up. Then I went back within and turned the air on. This was a bit cumbersome and sometimes I got locked out and had to wait for v minutes (a safety machinery) for the unit to start back up, only doing it this mode helped me keep peace of mind that I wouldn't blow my compressor out.

Value Adding

As I usually do, I like to do the math to see if doing the project myself was worth my time. In doing and then, I saved myself roughly $400. In total, I spent about 3.v hours doing my research and 30 minutes (0.5 hours) on the install. Then 4 hours total. Therefore in comparison to paying an a/c company, I instead paid myself $400 for iv hours of work, which equates to paying myself $100/hr.

Where it gets even better is I still have to install a hard get-go kit on the other a/c unit of measurement on our business firm. That volition take me 30 minutes, which, on a saving of $400, comes to equivalently paying myself at a rate of $800/hour on that install!

Determination

This endeavor was highly worth my fourth dimension! In savings, I justified putting my valuable time towards researching the subject area of "hard first kit" functioning and installation. I was able to safely and properly install a Hard Kickoff Kit on my air conditioning system.

As far as proof that a hard offset kit actually does extend the life of an a/c unit'due south condenser, I'm not 100% sure it volition, simply I obviously do believe enough that I chose to install a hard starting time kit.

I have seen technicians using an ammeter to testify that the offset-up current draw is significantly reduced past installing a difficult start kit. In theory that reduced electric current draw, considering of the increased efficiency (increased torque from the voltage/electric current stage shift), should reduce the mechanical wear and tear on the condenser and thus extend its life.

Nonetheless, I haven't all the same plant any actual research papers or data backed proof that proves using a Difficult Start Kit does in fact empirically extend the life of an air conditioner's condenser.

The whole thing could be just a gimmick that all the a/c companies and technicians recommend because of how much they brand installing it. One of those things where someone comes up with a theory, and a bunch of people buy into it considering they brand money on it (think Wall Street).

Simply the theory and examples of proof I was able to find online exercise seem to agree with my cognition and seem to highly indicate information technology will increase the life of the a/c unit. And so I chose to motion forward with the install.

Links to Purchase Difficult Kickoff Kit

• Hard Start Kit for one to 3 Ton Units
• Hard Start Kit for 3.5 to five Ton Units
• Hard Get-go Kit for 4 to 5 Ton Units

Source: https://www.terrycaliendo.com/increasing-the-life-of-your-air-conditioner-how-to-install-a-hard-start-kit/

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