My friend owns a home in Plano, and this summer it seems like in the afternoons, she doesn't have enough electricity coming in to run the a/c properly. Once at something like 2am, suddenly the lights got brighter, the fans started working better, etc. She's convinced that the a/c itself is fine. She's called TXU numerous times and finally one rep just told her that they are only a reseller. Has anyone had any experience of a problem like this, or does anyone have suggestions? She's not too keen on hiring an electrician to come out. She can't get her house much below 80 degrees in the afternoons. She doesn't have one of those rate-saver plans where they can cut power to stuff during high-peak times, and there's no device connected that is usually used for this purpose (at least that's the way it was when I had such a plan in Tucson). Thanks!
Michelle,
Just checking if you knew that TXU cycles power off/lower power to certain grid areas in the metroplex from time to time to avoid overload when usage is as high as it's been this summer. Ours went out completely for 30 min one afternoon recently. My husband owns and operates a lot of apartments and that's what TXU told him. So, it may not be your imagination, and indeed nothing may be wrong.
R.
Has she cleaned and changed her air filters thru the house? My dad owns an AC business and he says to change them every 3 months. It makes a HUGE difference and saves money:)
Not sure if this will help, but we noticed our home was not staying cool in the afternoons in the living/kitchen area which has high ceilings. I thought it was b/c of the high temps outside. Our a/c guy checked the air ducts and serviced the a/c (all fine). He said we could adjust air flow between rooms by adjusting the small levers at the beginning of each air duct connected to our unit in the attic (straight up is fully open and all the way to the right or left is closed). Also, a high efficiency a/c was put in the house since it was originally built and the a/c guy said we may need an additional return in the living room to help pull out that hot air and circulate more through the house (w/ the original a/c there was only one return).
A little about me:
Mom of 3 month old boy
It could be alot of things. Several things that we've experienced at different times are:
1. When they built the house, there was nick in the cable (in the ground) that runs the power to the house. So, we had some of these odd situations with the fading lites and finally lost the power altogether. And, since this was in the old days and it was in the line outside the house, the electric company did fix it.
2. She should have someone out to at least check the A/C. A basic service charge will run her around $50, but she should start there. Those guys should even be able to check the basic power feeding the unit with the meters they have. We had an A/C unit that seemed to be running okay, but it also never seemed to really cool things down. There was a part that was malfunctioning, causing the compressor to sporadically get shut off, so the fan would keep running, but no cold air was coming out alot of the times.
3. During peak power time last Friday in Flower Mound, our power was cycling off every 5 minutes or so for about 30 seconds for a couple of hours. I don't know what was going on, but she could be experiencing something similar, although I would think she would notice if her power was going out totally and that experience did not impact the overall performance of our air conditioning. It did, however, keep shutting off my dryer.
My hubby said it is probably a TXu transformer and that they ARE responsible. Maybe try to talk to another rep and see what they say.
Hi,
She might want to get the fuses checked to make sure they're not bad & that they are wired properly. When my hubby & I were in the country we had that issue with the electricity. Come to find out the manufacturer of the home failed to wire the fuse box properly which in turned caused us to have the A/C guy come out every summer prior to finding that info out/
I live in Plano also and had a similar problem earlier in the Summer. It seemed as if whenever anything major kicked on (the A/C, an iron got plugged in, etc) my lights would dim DRAMATICALLY. After TXU came out the THIRD time, they determined that there were wires that needed to replaced (at our expense) in our electrical box outside the house. Since replacing them, it has gotten a lot better.
I would tell your friend to have them check her box.
Hope this helps.
