Not a problem. In my area the bug thing is cottonwood. If you dont have that stuff around the coils stay much easier to clean.

My very first maintenance I went down to look at what I needed to do. It’s a trane unit, so the evaporator coil and the condensate pan come out on a slide which is pretty fancy.

If it’s the style I’m thinking of then you are flexing the refrigerant pipes whenever you do that. It’s designed to do that but just be aware that copper work hardens so you can only flex it so many times before it gets brittle and snaps. With your system being new there isn’t too much risk of snapping a line but it won’t be new forever. If it is possible to clean the evap without bending those pipes then that is the best way to do it.

As far as coil cleaner goes the most we ever recommend one of our customers use is just plain water out of a gardenhose (definitely not a pressurewasher). For most people that should be enough. But you’re not my customer so here’s what I use depending on the coil.

For small evap coils like a residential central air system I often use Evap Foam No Rinse. That stuff is pretty gentle and probably fine for most people to use. If kills any growth on the coil and foams up to push dirt out of the coil. Once applied it doesn’t need to be actively rinsed off because it’s designed to be rinsed off just by the condensation that builds up on the coil as the system runs.

For larger evap coils like in commercial roof top units or more heavily soiled evaps I will use either Tri-Pow’r HD or Evap Pow’r-C. I’ve found both to be about equally as effective but the evap cleaner does foam up a bit more. Both are still fairly safe to use but if you mix them more concentrated then you do need to actively rinse off the coil well when you’re done. I have a hard time imagining anyone breaking anything with either of these but technically they can do damage if left on the coil for too long.

When it comes to the new style microchannel condensers, heavily degraded older style fin and tube condensers, or lightly soiled older style condensers, I will also use Tri-Pow’r HD except I will mix it much stronger.

When it comes to heavily soiled older style fin and tube condensers which are otherwise in good physical shape I will use Nu-Brite. Nu-Brite is nasty shit. It will instantly burn skin, melt plastic, strip any oxidation off of metal, etch concrete, strip paint, strip the coating entirely off a coated coil, and, if left on a coil long enough, etch holes through the condenser pipes forcing you to buy a whole new condensing unit. It literally starts to smoke if it sits on the coil too long. It is aggressive as hell but man does it clean coils. I was working at a flour mill recently and made extensive use of this stuff to clean mouldering packed in flour mud out of condensers and it takes no time at all to do it’s job even with the worst soils. This stuff is perfectly safe to use if you use it right but if you don’t use it right then there is basically no fixing the damage it does. If you ever did decide to use it, just be sure to have a hose nearby ready to hose it off as quick and completely as possible. Once it starts foaming and smoking it has started doing damage.

Yeah, testing caps is also a pretty regular part of our PM process. Especially because that one looks like it may partially be a run cap and a system can often run perfectly fine without a run cap except it will cause the motor to pull higher amps and run hotter. Catching a bad run cap early is the difference between replacing a bad cap and replacing a burned up motor.

Edit: Although you’re already doing far more for your system than most. I’m an actual tech and it’s been a shamefully long time since my equipment at home has had a full PM done.

It’s going to depend on the area, but it shouldn’t cost quite that much for residential work. Hell, I’m a commercial refrigeration/hvac mechanic and my bill would still be less for that repair. You actually made me curious so I priced it out. TLDR if you don’t want to read below it comes out to $310 before taxes. So unless you’re in a stupidly expensive area your price should be under that for this repair from a residential HVAC tech. My best guess is that it would cost about $250 in my somewhat low cost of living area if done properly by a residential tech.

Price breakdown-

We upcharge a bit on parts depending on their cost (cheaper parts are upcharged more) but we also get a discounted price from the supply house so the actual upcharge amount is a bit weird to calculate. We do have one of these caps in our system (its 440V instead but oversizing doesn’t hurt) and our unit price (markup included) on it is $25. If this system has other start components then you would want to change those as well but I don’t know what this system looks like so I’m going to assume that only this cap is needed. Depending on the distance from the shop we charge a one time truck charge. However the main reason we have variable truck charges is because we’re more specialized and some of our customers are over 200 miles from our shop. Odds are for residential work you’d be working with a local company and for local work we charge our minimum truck charge of $45. If this was durring business hours then we charge $120 per hour. Afterhours rates are much higher of course but usually nobody is calling a tech afterhours to work on residential AC. Drive times to and from the site are included in the billed hours.

As far as time required a quick cap swap could easily be within our 1 hour minimum depending on drive time to the site but with this situation I would guess 2 hours may be more likely for reasons I’m about to explain. The cap is obviously bulged so any tech worth their salt would pinpoint it immediately. Of course any tech worth their salt is also going to check out the other components to ensure that there isn’t a reason the cap blew. That means checking contactors, compressor windings, and ither caps. Once the new cap is installed that also means checking running amps and inrush current. While you’re at it you’ll want to at least check refrigerant line temps because that’ll give you a rough read on the system charge and state of the coils. For this unit I wouldn’t be hooking gauges up unless something was off with the temps and couldn’t be easily explained. It’s also just a good idea to watch the system run for a bit and make sure it cycles on/off correctly to make sure it’s not short cycling or something. With all that you could be looking at an hour onsite. Depending on the system and the delays you can’t really shave that down much if the tech is going to be able to see the unit run. If you cut out watching the system run basically entirely you can shave 30min off that but that’s also a sure fire way to get a callback for something you didn’t catch. The bigger issue though is that this is a dual value cap. It isn’t going to be standard van stock and until the tech gets onsite they won’t know what cap they need. So you’re looking at that tech also having to make a trip back to the shop to pick up the correct cap. I carry universal caps in my van but those are much more expensive so they’re really only for emergency repairs or to temporarily run a system if we need to order a specific cap. So if we assume 15min from the shop to the customer and the tech has to make that trip 4 times (out to customer, back to get part, back to customer, and back to shop when done) then were looking at an hour just in drive time.

So in total we have 2 hours of $120 per hour labor + $45 truck charge + $25 part = $310 plus relevant taxes.

The fan motors will often also have them. It just depends on the size and type of motor. Most big AC motors use them unless you’re dealing with 3 phase power.

Eh, they do age but a spare capacitor sitting in a likely climate controlled building and not being used isn’t going to age nearly as quickly as the one in use likely in the outdoors. Will it be as good as a brand new one? No. But it will be damn near as good and it will be on hand when you need it.

At the same time though, if a motor kills start components often enough that you need to keep a spare on hand then there is something wrong with that motor or your power source.

If there are other start components then those should also be swapped. One component failing can weaken the others, especially the start relay.

realizing that the fan motor was janky (which might be what caused the cap to fail)

Yep, that is often the case. I’m a hvac/refrigeration tech and I’d say about 20% of the time I have to replace start components, it’s because the motor in question is starting to fail.

A quick tip if you want to minimize the number of repairs. If a motor dies, replace all the start components as well. The old ones might be fully functional and even test good but when the motor quit it likely weakened them. Similarly, if one start component fails then just replace all of them for the same reason. A failing start cap or run cap can really beat up the start relay so even if it works temporarily, it will often fail later. Also if you notice that you keep having to replace start components for a particular motor then that motorcis starting to fail. We see that all the time with compressors in particular. A hard start kit can help in that case but it shouldn’t be considered a fix.

As a refrigeration/HVAC guy, the past couple months have been hell. Most of our crew has been working over 60 hours a week for two months straight and we still aren’t even close to keeping up. We’re having to heavily triage calls. Hell, I just finally got dispatched to a prison the other day where aparently a whole cell block had been mostly without AC for an entire week. Normally a call like that would get someone dispatched same day but we just don’t have the people. I work with guys that have been doing this for decades and even they say that the current volume of tickets is unprecedented.

I just jam my gas cap in the handle.

Yeah, we don’t really use village in the US. A town is anything with a population smaller than about 10,000ish but the exact number will vary with the density and vibe. If you can’t drive across the entire population center (where it’s roughly broken into blocks) within the span of Freebird by Lynyrd Skynyrd (single version not album version) then it’s too big to be a town.