One of the pleasant side effects of home air conditioning is the soothing white noise they produce, which can effectively block distracting outdoor sounds. When your AC begins to make odd noises, it not only breaks up that barrier of white noise, it might also be a signal that the AC system needs attention. Of the different strange sounds an AC can make, rattling is one of the most common. We have often made service calls to attend to rattling air conditioning in Tempe, AZ, so we can explain some of the reasons it can occur. If you start hearing your AC rattle, contact Goettl Good Guys Air Conditioning, and we’ll get right out to you to discover what the trouble is and fix it before it grows into bigger trouble. Loose panels: This is the simplest explanation for a rattling sound. Sometimes the panels on the cabinets housing the condenser or the evaporator will become dislodged because of screws that have worked loose or weren’t screwed back tight enough after the panel was opened.

Before considering other issues, make sure the panels are secure. Debris: Your air conditioner’s cabinets should be as free as possible from outside contamination. But if the air filter becomes clogged, or the outdoor unit doesn’t have a clear area around it, then dirt, gravel, leaves, sticks, and other small items can enter the cabinet and start getting knocked around. This requires immediate attention: not only will such debris damage the AC’s components, but you have to find out how the debris got inside so you can prevent it from happening again. Misaligned fan: One of the AC’s fans may be striking its casing, either because of damage (from the debris mentioned above) or poor installation. This will become progressively worse until the fan no longer works, so have it fixed as soon as you can. Broken motors: The motors that run the fans and the condenser in an air conditioner contain the most moving parts of any component in the system. If the motors suffer damage or start to wear down, their internal parts can become dislodged and start to rattle around.

This is another problem that debris infiltration can create. Although a rattling air conditioner may need only a simple fix, it could also indicate the start of an issue that will only grow worse and trigger a domino effect of other repair needs. Since many of these problems come from debris, make sure you regularly change the air filter to keep the interior of the AC clean. But when that rattling noise starts, be prepared to call for professional help—you want the problem solved when it’s still small. With over 70 years providing Tempe, AZ with air conditioning repairs, maintenance, and installation, Goettl Good Guys Air Conditioning is the company to call. Friday, October 18th, 2013 at 9:16 pm | 9,184 posts, read 18,506,347 times 107,588 posts, read 39,577,952 times Originally Posted by motifone If you have a furnace filter, it wont be on the condenser outside. It will be in the unit in the attic.The short answer is that if the air in or around your home is not safe and breathable, you need to leave the area and possibly seek medical attention.

You're extremely unlikely to be able to MacGyver your way out of a truly life-threatening air quality event caused by a wildfire (or any comparable industrial accident). Follow the advice laid out in the CDC article you linked. There is no One Weird Trick that Firefighters Hate method for avoiding relocation/evacuation.wiring size for ac unit If you belong to a sensitive group—elderly, asthmatic, pregnant, etc.—there may be shelter space available at a local hospital or other public, professionally-ventilated building during extreme air quality events. best hvac home unitsWatch the news, listen to the radio, contact your local government office, etc. to find out about this sort of resource.ambient temperature ac unit It's reasonable to be concerned about exposure to smoke at levels that are irritating or unpleasant, even if not immediately life-threatening.

What most people want to know is, what are the long-term harms of breathing this smoke? How can I stay comfortable in my home while also protecting my health? The California Air Resources Board's wildfire smoke guide for public officials summarizes the issue this way (emphasis mine): One concern that may be raised by members of the general public is whether they run an increased risk of cancer or of other chronic health conditions (e.g. heart disease) from short-term exposure toPeople exposed to toxic air pollutants at sufficient concentrations and durations may have slightly increased risks of cancer or of experiencing other chronic health problems. general, the long-term risks from short-term smoke exposures are quiteShort-term elevated exposures to wildfire carcinogens are also small relative to total lifetime exposures to carcinogens in diesel exhaust and other combustion sources. shown that urban firefighters exposed to smoke over an entire working

lifetime have about a threefold increased risk of developing lungThis provides some perspective on the magnitude of potential risks from short-term wildfire events. "Short-term" in the context of a wildfire is usually on the order of a few days. Though the fires themselves can burn for much longer—one recent wildfire in California burned for over a year)—wind and weather patterns blow the smoke in different directions at different times, so that it's very rare for any particular area to be smoked in for more than a few weeks, unless it's surrounded by or right next to the fire (in which case I would expect the area to have been officially evacuated). Being smoked in can be very unpleasant (I know from experience) but unless you have a pre-existing respiratory condition it's unlikely to pose a real danger to the average adult. When the smoke gets so thick that it poses an acute risk to the average person, your only reliable solutions are to leave the area or find shelter in a building that has a well-engineered ventilation system.

Local agencies may direct sensitive groups to official shelter areas, often shopping malls, as their systems are already designed to supply comfortable, conditioned air to a great many people. Even if not officially designated as a shelter, an large, air-conditioned commercial building (not an apartment building) is almost always going to be better-equipped for this purpose than your home. If you're very concerned about your exposure to smoke and your ability to relocate during extreme air quality events, hire a licensed and bonded HVAC contractor who specializes in high-efficiency central heating and air systems. You need a tight building envelope and a positive pressure ventilation (PPV) system if your goal is to prevent smoke infiltration, plus better-than-consumer-grade filtration to effectively remove the particulates that do make it into the home (e.g., on your clothing). This will be an expensive retrofit, generally more so the older the home is (newer homes are built with generally tighter envelopes).

I'm not sure PPV is even feasible in the typical single-family home and, if it is, it will cost an arm and a leg—I mentioned it half as a joke (think space suits and airlocks). Realistically, a professional whole-house job is probably not an option, and you might be thinking—well, I'll just do it myself on the cheap. Olin's answer suggests that sealing your house well enough to make a DIY fan/filter arrangement workable is "hard to do" and while that is correct, it's also a bit of an understatement. You could do more harm than good by blowing in outside air that's not filtered properly—or, for that matter, by backdrafting the exhaust from a gas appliance into your home. Improperly ventilated gas appliances do kill people every year in the U.S.; while it's statistically less likely than being hit by lightning, a bad DIY job in a house with no CO detector is a great way to increase your odds of winning this fabulous prize. So what you want to do, if this will be a DIY project, is focus on simply sealing your building envelope—check and replace weatherstripping and door sweeps, feel for drafts around windows, doors and vents.

You'll still want to hire an HVAC company to come do a home energy audit/weatherization, but this will be relatively inexpensive. They'll check floor registers, bathroom fans, range hoods and many other potential draft sources and seal any they find as best they can—few homeowners have the experience and equipment required to do a competent job at this themselves. The more you prevent infiltration of smoke while your doors and windows are closed, the less demand you place on any consumer-grade indoor filter you buy. Then, go out and buy HEPA filtration units sufficient to cover your living area. Specifically, you're looking for a device that sits on the floor or on a shelf that recirculates the air in the room through a removable filter. Don't be fooled by "artificial cheese flavor product" style marketing tricks; many cheaper units will say "HEPA" on the box and make claims that sound impressive but will not actually be tested and proven to meet this (or any) specific standard:

HEPA filters, as defined by the DOE standard adopted by most American industries, remove at least 99.97% of airborne particles 0.3 micrometers (µm) in diameter. The diameter part is important; not all particle pollution is created equal and there are any number of ways to filter large particles. What would you think if I sold you a filter that was guaranteed to remove 99.97% of airborne particles 100 µm in diameter? You might not realize I'm selling you a cotton shirt, and the particles it removes are the size of sand on a beach. Look for products that have been tested and certified to deliver real HEPA filtration (PDF). They cost more, because testing isn't free—but cheaper models may or may not protect you at all from the smaller particles that we believe cause the most harm. Refer to the manufacturer's specifications to see how much square footage the unit covers and keep in mind that closed doors, small hallways and stairways all tend to inhibit airflow, so a smaller filter in each living space is often more effective than a larger filter in a central area.

Follow the recommended filter replacement schedule. Avoid "ionic" type units, particularly the ones in this list; some of them at least won't poison you but I'm not confident they offer any real filtration benefit. In an extreme situation where you've exhausted all other options and can't leave the home, I guess bring all the filter units you have into one room, shut the door and turn them on—but I make no guarantees it will protect your health, especially if you fail to follow the safety recommendations of organizations like the CDC. (At the prepper level of paranoia, you could go shopping for an expensive respirator with a dedicated air supply but this seems a bit like bringing your own personal parachute on an airplane—if you expect to need it, you probably shouldn't make the trip at all.) If you have central air, there should also be one or more filters on your return air ducting. These are sometimes only designed to trap larger particles but you should learn about your system and the filters it accepts, and perform regular maintenance to keep them in working order.