York air conditioner runs good couple hours turns hot pipes frozen inside

[coffeeman]

pretty old but cools good . had guy about 3 years ago recharge it. got it running and he said will last a week or so. It'll leak out the gas. He actually said shut 'er down . I get u prices on new one. Be back in week with estimate. That week was hot and I used it. On hot days I blew air good. On a moderate day works good. Hot day I get 1 to 3 hours and freeze up. couple hours melts and works again. My house has 3 air conditioners and I am zoned in such a way I only have trouble cooling in hot days. until icing up. Any ideas?

The unit is a heat pump. Don't use for heat as I heat with Well gas from shallow well. I have wondered why heat pump sometimes would heat things up in winter and melt iced up heat pump. In addition I have thermostat set for emergency heat setting to kick my gas furnace on when needs heat in air handler. I think heating guy locked out heat pump feature.

I always thought freezing up would usually be caused by low freon ?? Heating guy says unit too old. Thats why freeze.

What can we do these days??

Coffeeman..........Any suggestions will be appreciated... YOU ALL BE SAFE...

 

[ssgp2]

Two things will cause a/c to ice up. 1. Low/incorrect refrigerant charge (some mechanical issues could replicate this problem). 2. Low airflow over evaporator coil. This could be caused by: a. dirty filter; b. dirty /clogged coil; c. bad blower motor; d. a combination of any of the above. If it had a leak before and he didn't locate and fix it, only added refrigerant, that would be the first thing to address, BUT, if it's old and not been cleaned/maintained, that would be of concern, especially if there are pets in the house.

 

[Tractor Seabee]

Diagnostic factor from my younger days as an AC&R Tech; icing up of the cooling coil, check for low air flow across the coil.

Package equipment like AC units are designed with in certain parameters of required air flow to prevent icing. Disturb that required CFM and icing occurs. Package units traditionally do not have a low pressure cut off switch so the coil gets colder and colder as the compressor keeps on pumping. Operating like that will extremely shorten the life of compressors as they are designed for certain compression ratio (suction to discharge pressures).

At least the tech told you you had a leak. He was banking on a sale of new equipment when he returned with a price the next week when the refrigerant loss again put you in a buying mood. Shame on him for not identifying the real cause of the icing to give you more ammunition to make a buying decision. In general old equipment (10-20+ years) is very in-efficient and at its life cycle anyway. Quit horsing around and buy a new system, but fix why the air flow is down if not tied to the old equipment, like a plugged return air duct. I once found a huge hornets nest built across the face of an indoor coil. Luckily the hornets had already left it. If you really don't need a heat pump don't spend the extra $.

Ron