Air Conditioning Flood Damage Repair in Houston
Hello Houston,
I am Gregg Berens from A-1 Tops Services in Houston, Texas, I wanted to go over a few things you should do before turning on your Air Conditioner if it has sustained flood water damage.
First of all, I hope you turned off the 240 Volt power to it and also turned off your 115 Volt Furnace switch or 240 Volt Air Handler breaker, if you have electric heat. The next thing you need to do is wait 2 days until the condenser on the outside dries out, or your inside unit, if it is inside a flooded area. Then call your insurance company and tell them what happened, some insurance will not cover floods but they cover branches that fell on the unit or lighting.
After that call your Air Conditioning Contractor A-1 Tops Services and let them check for electrical problems and check the condenser fan motor (the motor on top) and make sure the seal was not damaged. We will need to take the motor out, then clean the condenser from the inside out as A-1 Tops Services does on their annual maintenance agreement. Even though the condenser coils are copper or aluminum, they can corrode and cause a leak from flooded waters.
The last most important item that should be on your check list will be to make sure, your compressor terminals are checked with a Megohmmeter. The reason behind this is because the regular Ohm Meter just determines if the test current supplied, between the ends of the windings is taking a shortcut at a point where the insulation has failed. This is because a current is usually around 50 milliamps but at a very low voltage. The resistance measured is very low usually one thousandth of an Ohm. (Any load such a light bulb or a motor has a resistance value and is measured in Ohms) that is basically a unit of electrical resistance.
A Megohmmeter measures the insulation resistance between the Coil and ground supplying a very high voltage to break down the insulation and measuring very low current. The resistance measured is very high somewhere around 100 million Ohms.
As we all know, with Hurricane Harvey we had a lot of lighting and power losses and fluctuations. Analyzing the decreasing insulating resistance levels can predict failure before a catastrophe of your Air Conditioning System.
I don’t know about you, but if it is my system, I would like to know if there is a catastrophe or big expense to come in the future doing a qualified test using a proven technique by an expert Contractor, that could be possibly covered by your home insurance.
Remember that it can be functioning properly now but if the insulation resistance has deteriorated it could fail in the near future costing you a lot of money.
Hope you are safe and dry.
Gregg Berens
A-1 Tops Services
