Air Conditioner acting strange

[bigdob24]

My 15K air conditioner has always acted kinda strange.
Seems like it only happens when it's been working hard late in the day.
It cools like it should but you can hear the fan shut off for maybe 5 seconds and then come back on .
As this happens the compresser never shuts down. Sometimes the fan sounds like it speeds up when it comes back on .
It may do this several times but when the outside temp cools down it will cycle like it should, off and then back on.
My dealer seems to think it's just working hard and nothing to worry about as its cooling like it should.
Anyone else experience anything like this?
One of these days I need to get a second air installed.

 

[buddyboy]

What's your outside temp and humidity? Also, we found out that if you have the closet door shut, trapped heat doesn't get cooled. We crack open the doors.

 

[MCTalley]

Our previous Big Country used to do that. Sometimes when the fan started back up it would be on low, other times it would go back to high. Every three minutes or so, forever, as long as it was hot outside like you said. Over the course of two years it never seemed to have any ill effects on the unit. Used to drive me nuts, though.

 

[Ducktracker]

My Elkridge does the same thing. I was wondering if it was normal. Glad I'm not the only one that was wondering about it. I will follow this closely.


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[Miltp920]

We seem to have the same issue on our 2014 Cyclone 3100. Took to dealer under warranty. They replaced the thermostat. No change. They told me it was either the thermostat OR a electronics card in the A/C unit. So, I told them to send me the new card. It is supposed to be easy to replace the card. I am waiting, they said it may take awhile to get it out to me. I posted my issue earlier in another thread talking about cycling on A/C:

After we got tired off the cycling on and off we just shut it off. it would have kept cycling all night long. I actually set my smart phone timer and watched the cycle for 20 minutes.for awhile it was ON for 53 seconds and then OFF for 105 seconds, then it went to ON for 55 seconds and OFF for 40 seconds or less. Just before we shut it off, it was ON for 115 seconds before cutting OFF. I have cleaned the sponge filter. We have A white Dometic thermostat which is mounted about 6 feet under the A/C unit just inside the main cabin door.

 

[wdk450]

Just for everybody's information, what is the brand/model of the air conditioner??

 

[Lou_and_Bette]

The Dometic rep during a seminar at Goshen addressed this question. He said, if you have A/C set on "auto" and temp nears set temp, the "brains" of the system starts trying to decide if it needs high/low fan and it takes the " brain" a couple of seconds to decide. That is why fan stops but compressor continues to run. He indicated this was normal. He also said if humidity is high and auto setting has fan on low, the system will detect a build up of ice on condenser and pause for a moment to change to high setting to prevent freeze up.

 

[jam20ster]

The Dometic rep during a seminar at Goshen addressed this question. He said, if you have A/C set on "auto" and temp nears set temp, the "brains" of the system starts trying to decide if it needs high/low fan and it takes the " brain" a couple of seconds to decide. That is why fan stops but compressor continues to run. He indicated this was normal. He also said if humidity is high and auto setting has fan on low, the system will detect a build up of ice on condenser and pause for a moment to change to high setting to prevent freeze up.

Interesting. My 2 week old 4200 Cyclone does the same thing and I was wondering if it was going to have any ill effects on the life of the a/c. Sounds like this is just something that we will have to live with until things cool off here in Texas.

 

[bigdob24]

Mine is a 15K btu Dometic.
I talked with my dealer and he said he has noticed that the wall where the thermostat is mounted is hollow.
Warm air from the basement sometimes flows up the wall and contacts the back of the thermostat.
" In the winter it would affect it just the opposite , cold air affecting the heat setting"
They suggested remove the thermostat and put some insulation in the whole behind the thermostat .
I did try that and not much help.
Sounds like what the Dometic rep said is true and nothing to worry about.
Thanks for all the advise.

 

[Miltp920]

Mine also is a 15K Dometic. My thermostat is white.

 

[lynndiwagoner]

The book says that when the temp gets within 2 degrees of the set temp the AC will automatically switch to low fan speed.

 

[TxCowboy]

A good thread to be following. We're on the coast in South Texas so high temps and even higher humidity. My 15K Dometic does exactly what everyone's appears to be doing.

 

[earlh20659]

My 2016 Cyclone 3110 bedroom ac is raining and occasionally spitting ice chips from the bedroom ac. The thermostat is set to auto 73 degrees. It cools good most of the time,, but without warning the unit will start dripping and on rarer occasions you can hear ice chips hit the fan and some comes out of the vents. I understand the humidity and airflow possibilities, but with the unit on auto shouldn't the unit figure out what needs to happen so that it dosen't rain in the bedroom

earlh20659

 

[benmack1]

My new 4010 RD BC is doing this same thing. First the front did it now the main AC is doing this. The fan will shut off, but I can clearly hear the compressor continuing to run. The fan then starts up again after about 5 seconds and they both run, then it repeats this cycle after a few minutes. Seems bad for the system but seems like many are doing this same performance. It does sound from other posts like it's the electronic brain of the AC trying to sort out the fan speed. What I also noticed (I think, still an ongoing experiment) is if I just set the fan to hi (or I suppose low would work too) and then to AC that the fan just runs continuously (as expected) and the compressor cycles with the call for cooling or not. Might be helpful to someone but your fan is going to run until you manually tell it to stop. This is only our second trip in this unit so not sure what 'normal' actually is yet.

I was going to run it back to the dealer for warranty but sounds like there is not yet a solution. Let's keep this thread alive until someone figures this out (like dometic figuring it out).

 

[Lou_and_Bette]

Brian, do not run your fan on low for any extended period of time, the unit will freeze up. Either high or auto is recommended.

 

[benmack1]

Brian, do not run your fan on low for any extended period of time, the unit will freeze up. Either high or auto is recommended.

Thanks, that's a great point. I wasn't thinking when I posted about the use of low. I use the high setting, I actually like the white noise so no problem for me. Will running on Hi continuously be any kind of a problem in anyone's opinion?

 

[Jess]

This sounds similar to the problem I've been having in my 2015 Gateway 3750. I've been running it with the fan on high but it still seems to drip quite a bit, but not all the time, just occasionally.

https://heartlandowners.org/showthread.php/53844-Leaky-Rear-AC

My 2016 Cyclone 3110 bedroom ac is raining and occasionally spitting ice chips from the bedroom ac. The thermostat is set to auto 73 degrees. It cools good most of the time,, but without warning the unit will start dripping and on rarer occasions you can hear ice chips hit the fan and some comes out of the vents. I understand the humidity and airflow possibilities, but with the unit on auto shouldn't the unit figure out what needs to happen so that it dosen't rain in the bedroom

earlh20659

 

[jmgratz]

The only issue running the fan on high is it will run continuously eating up electricity. Very important if you pay the electric bill.

 

[tmanfromtexas]

Just wanted to say that I have the same issue with the unit cycling off and on all night. It seems so strange that Dometec would set their units up to do this. It cant be good for the compressor. I was thinking that it was the thermostat but apparently from other poster's comments changing it didn't affect the unit from continuing to do it. If anyone gets a fix please post it. I would not want to run the fan constantly but if that is what it takes to get a good nights sleep, I guess I will try it. BTW I am running that a/c in a Cyclone 4000.

 

[wrgrs50s]

I've been following multiple threads on this issue since purchasing my rig in 2011 and have not seen a fix yet. I think Dometic's stance is if it's cooling don't worry about it. I run my unit on low all night and High all day because all the off on crap is frustrating. I see where a few have stated that the unit will freeze up on low but I've never had that happen so far.