Winery/Cellar AC problem........ Solved!

[ibglowin]

So in the Spring of 2010 I picked up a small GE window AC unit to cool my winery/cellar area.

Paid all of $120 for it and figured if it lasted 2-3 years I got my money's worth. Fast forward 5 years to 2015 and all of a sudden after 4 seasons of flawless service it starts to act up and is not cooling like it has in the past. This past weekend things came to a head as the temps in the Winery/Cellar crept up to 71 degrees F. Now the setting was for 65 and in previous seasons the unit had no problems holding the room temp at 65 degrees.

I did a little Googling and quickly came up with someone who had a fix for just the problem I was experiencing. These units have internal temp probes that work to actually shut the AC unit off when it has reached the temp much like a house unit. The fix is to clean the filter (mine had just a small amount of dirt) and then remove the cover and pull the internal thermo probe out of the box and run the wire out through either the front or side of the unit.

I cleaned the filter and easily found the probe in question and removed the wire through the side of the front panel and reassembled the front panel.

Viola! The unit is now cooling just like a brand new unit and is cooling the Winery/Cellar back down to 64 degrees F. The air temp coming out of the unit is 45 degrees so it was obviously not a Freon problem.

Just wanted to post up a quick and easy fix for some of these Window AC units that are out there these days.

The Winery/Cellar is FREEZING once again. Its a great place to retreat to and cool off when it gets warm!

 

[nucjd]

WOW!!! Cellar cooling unit costing 120! That is amazing. My whisper cool I think was about 1000 dollars . It has been in my cellar for about 10 years and working like clock work. I have a friend who is on his 3rd cooling unit for his cellar ( he has about 2000 bottles and it was pro built ) in the last past five years and spent about 5000 dollars on cooling units. I think you have it figured out.

 

[ibglowin]

Can the Whisper Cool units cool to ~55F ? That would be worth some extra cash for sure. Not sure about ~8X more though. LOL

The downside to using these cheap window units is that you can only set them to a low of ~65 or so. Thats still much better than no cooling in the Summer but not as good as 55 would be for sure. I may play with the probe placement to see if I can find a slightly warmer placement spot and see if that would give me an extra degree of room cooling. I only have about 4-5 inches to play with. What I noticed with the unit was that in the Energy Saver Mode when the AC shut off the unit was reading like 60 degrees but another digital temp probe a few feet away was read more like 68-70. Made sense that it was a temp probe issue of some sort.

I have been very happy with the performance of this little GE unit. No maintenance till now. I was all ready to go pick up the next sized up unit for like $80 more but I think I will just let this little guy hum along for as long as I can.

 

[nucjd]

Yea it can hold 55 degrees through most of the year. In the late summer my cellar can climb to about 60 degrees and during the late winter it can drop to about 45-50 degrees in its greatest fluctuations. I have been pretty happy with it.

 

[ibglowin]

Its worth it for your area. I am lucky in that for ~6 months a year my cellar is at ~55F without the need for any cooling.

 

[Boatboy24]

Mike:

About how many cubic feet are you cooling with that little guy? I've been thinking about doing the same. I have two "transom" windows in what will become my storage area in the basement. Once I wall of and insulate, it'd be nice to have it slightly cooler in there.

 

[ibglowin]

The unit I have is right at 5000 BTU's and the winery/cellar is ~20x10 so ~200ft(2). I also added 12" of attic blanket a few years ago including this area. The orignal owner of the house was an artist that had the back portion of the garage converted to a separate studio of sorts. Perfect cellar but I wish it was a bit larger…. LOL

It is COLD in there now!

 

[nucjd]

Whoops I was wrong about my unit. It is a Breezair WK4000. It has been a great little unit for Alabama heat. The Cellar is 20x10x6ft in dimension and it has run perfect.

 

[joeswine]

Cooling unit

if you removed the sensing bulb from the unit and the unit response that is a indication that metering device in your case a capillary tube has either a moisture problem or if it's attach to a txv,then it's faulty,by putting the sensor out in the ambient, what you've done is make the metering devise run wide open all the time,from your friendly ,hvac contractor.

 

[ibglowin]

This is sort of a "known issue" with some of these GE units. This is the fix that was suggested and it is working perfectly.

 

[Dhaynes]

Nucjd - I'm excited to find a fellow winemaker relatively near by. We live in Anniston. Hopefully we can meet up one of these days and swap some bottles and stories. Email me if you are interested at [email protected]

Inflowing - Glad to know this inexpensive unit worked for you. I'm in the process of converting my garage now. I may give something like this a try. Where do you live and what sort of daytime highs do you run in summer?

 

[ibglowin]

I am in northern NM at altitude of ~ 6500ft. Summers can have high heat in the mid 90's in June but monsoon season kicks in usually in July and August and keeps the daytime highs usually no more than low to mid 80's.