Is My Landlady Responsible for Repairing Central Air in Our Rental?

The answer is, tell her with a smile on your face and don't get angry when she thanks you but doesn't offer to pay. Yes, your landlady is responsible for anything that was there before you moved in. The air conditioner is not like a furnace or toilet, she only has to make repairs in a reasonable amount of time.

You don't have the right to fix something without her permission though. Why? Because it's not your property, it's hers.

If you had messed up she would be in her rights to make you pay for any damages or replacement. What if the unit had a warranty? Did you void it?

What if she has a contract with a maintenance service? What if her guy gets paid less then your guy? What if while fixing something yourself, you injure yourself?

Is she responsible if you didn't get her permission first? . All of this should have been discussed before you moved in.

Most people get all this in writing. I live in half a house and I signed a generic lease, with my landlady's rules added. /// ////

• Related Questions

if the cost of operating a central air conditioner for 24 hours is about $0.

67 an hour. how much does it cost?

Each 1000 BTU on an air conditioner takes about one amp of electricity to operate the compressor and fan motor.

An air conditioner this size will utilize 115 volts AC electricity. Wattage equals volts times amperes. In this case it would be 1,035 watts.

Since this does not take into account reactance in the AC motors--plus the resistance in the wiring, it would be safe to say that the actual power consumption would be at least 1,100 watts. The cost is calculated in kilowatt hours. Which means that if it costs $1.

00 per kilowatt hour, then running a 1.1 kilowatt air conditioner for one hour is going to cost you $1.10.

Two factors make it difficult to give you a correct answer. One factor is that only you know the costs of utilities in your area and nobody else does becasue it wasn't specitfied in the qurestion. The other factor is going to depend upon how the thermostat is set.

If the unit is set so that it only barel;y cools a room, then once that temperature is reached, the AC will shut off If the unit cycles on and off a few times within an hour, then the off-time would have to be eliminated in calculating the cost, since the unit would not be running. If the thermostat is cranked down low so that the unit more or less runs continuously, then calculating the cost would be straightforward

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Regarding venting portable a/c into central air vents when air is not on.

I assume you want to use a portable A/C at night in your bedroom and turn your main air conditioner off at night?

In theory you could vent the hot air into your central air ducting, but two main problems arise. First, that hot air really needs to be discharged outside of your living space. By discharging it into the ductwork, the air will find it's way into the other rooms of your home as you've stated, but when you bring your central air on during the day, it will have to work that much harder to cool the overheated rooms you've created from the night before.

Secondly, the air register in your bedroom probably won't be large enough to handle the amount of hot air put out by the portable A/C, which in turn will force some of that air into your occupied bedroom counter acting some of the effects of the cooling, or cause back pressure on the portable which will reduce its capacity to provide full cooling. I would really recommend just venting it out the window. If it's at night, chances are that nobody will really notice it anyways.

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Does a central air conditioner need to be serviced before I turn it on?

Just like you are doing, the most important thing is the furnace filter, it's vital that it is always clean, it will get dirty faster than it does in heating season because of the higher speed of fan and increased air flow. Before you start it up, make sure the outdoor unit is uncovered, the outside fins (looks like a rad) are free of leaves and grass etc (hose off with city pressure, NEVER pressure wash) ensure the disconnect switch is on outside (some are just a switch, some pull out and flip over) It's also a good idea to take a paint stick and give the fan on the outdoor unit a light push to make sure it spins easily as hasn't seized over the winter.

You might want to set you thermostat to 2 degrees higher (e.g. 23oc/74oF) than what you set it at for heating as the same temperature you use for heat will feel cooler in A/c mode.

When you have the A/C running, make sure your homes windows and doors are closed or it won't work effectively. The first time it runs, you may not feel it is working for possibly a few hours.this is because the unit has to remove the excess humidity from your homes air) When you shut it down in the fall, just place a piece of plywood on the top of the outdoor unit to protect it.

vinyl covers can make the unit sweat inside and shorten the life of the contacts and other electrical connections. hope this helps

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Can I vent a portable air conditioner into the central air vents when central air is turned off?

If you are running the downstairs unit at the same time this is foolish, it will have an adverse effect on the other system.

Even if you are doing this while the other system is off, you are not getting rid of the heat from the window unit. It's just going to linger around the area around the unit and defeat the purpose of even running it at all. How do you plan on diverting the exhaust air into another vent?

Do you just plan on setting the a/c in the room and running it with the discharge sitting in front of a return vent. The whole idea is ridiculous. Anyone that prevents you from using a window air conditioner in their building deserves a visit from the local code enforcement officer in your village, city or township.

If you need cooling, you need cooling and no landlord or property manager has the right to deny you a comfortable bedroom at night. A window a/c needs the hot air discharged to the outside. If you are simply dumping the hot air into another room you are going to overheat the window a/c as the other room heats up.

If you want to burn-up an a/c unit and waste a lot of electricity doing so, you are on the right path. If you want to do the right thing and avoid problems you should listen to me. I have over 22-years experience in Air Conditioning and Heating.

I also know a lot about landlord/tenant rights and politics. I hope this was helpful information.

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How to Move a central air conditioner from one side of the house to the other.

hi Nancy: 2 ordinary issues you could try is to interchange the filter out and sparkling the indoor and outdoors coils. i've got seen this enhance the performance of structures by skill of 50%. to be certain in the journey that your needed air unit is working surprising, turn the equipment on and take a sturdy thermometer (i take advantage of a cooking thermometer) and place it interior the return vent (the vent occurring your furnace).

provide it a couple of minutes, then write down the temperature. Then pass to a grant sign up (one that materials air to the room) and place the thermometer there for extra or less 5 minutes. The air popping out could be sixteen-20 ranges cooler than the air getting in.

whether it is 15 ranges or much less OR 22 ranges or extra, you have a situation which will could be dealt with by skill of a expert. in case you have a sturdy temperature drop, the equipment may well be undersized; you will pick one "ton" of cooling skill (12,000 Btu) in step with 900 squareft of floor area. (In KS, you could pick 1T in step with seven hundred ft2.

) different than changing your equipment, you need to upload a wall or window mount unit on the south area of your place. are you able to plant some poplar wood and different deciduous wood on the south area of your materials? they gained't help this or next 365 days, yet after that

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can someone explain the operation of an air conditioner or heating pump performance in terms of COPin terms of?

The easiest way to visualise it is to consider a steam engine, boiler & condenser only in this situation the engine is driving the boiler & condenser, not the other way around. Consider the compressor as the engine & what it does is lower the pressure in the evaporator (boiler) to a point where the refrigerant will evaporate at the temperature it's at or lower. At the same time it raises the pressure in the condenser to a point where it will condense.

The result is that the refrigerant boils at a much lower temperature & condenses at a much higher one. There is a component called an "expansion valve" in the liquid line from the condenser to the evaporator & it's function is to throttle the refrigerant so that it boils & expands slightly in the evaporator. By virtue of the heat carrying capacity of the refrigerant which differs from one refrigerant to another (ammonia being one of the best) the transported heat in the cycle is more than the energy required to drive the compressor.

The relationship between the energy input from the compressor motor & the heat transported is the COP or "coefficient of performance"

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How does an air conditioner work?

AC takes advantage of the fact that as pressure is increased, the boiling point of a material increases. Likewise as the pressure is decreased, the boiling point goes down.

An air conditioner is made up of a compressor, run by a motor, and two heat exchange coils, a high pressure coil, and a low pressure coil. The Compressor compresses low pressure gas up and send it to the high pressure coil. The high pressure coil uses a fan to suck air past the coil cooling the gas and condensing it to a liquid.

(Condensing is the opposite of boiling, and it happens at the same temperature as boiling.) The liquid is then let down in pressure. This drops the temperature of the liquid because some liquid vaporizes to gas.

The cool liquid and gas go to the low pressure coil. An air recirculating fan takes air from the house and circulates it through this low pressure coil, causing the liquid to pick up heat and vaporize. This vaporized material is then ready to be compressed back outside to the high pressure coil.

In central air, four items use power: 1) the Compressor 2) the Condensor Fan (outside) 3) the air circulating Fan in the house 4) the controls for the AC System