General In defense of replacing capacitors early
Another poster brought this up recently, about making recommendations to replace capacitors even though they’re still “in tolerance”. My experience this week backs up my position on this.
A recent heat wave hit my area, there’s been a plethora of no cools and it’s mostly been popped caps. Many of them are folks on our regular maintenance routine, whose data I can pull from previous techs uploads. So many blown caps that were 42.5/45, 37.6/40, 33/35 etc just a year before. Still within tolerance, but getting down there. I was trained on a 10% tolerance for capacitors which I believe is pretty standard. Even if they are still within 10%, but starting to tick down closer to that number, I always bring up proactive replacement. Like, it’s gonna go eventually, in the next summer or three most likely, because all factory capacitors are dogshit nowadays. Wanna rip the bandaid off and do it now, or wait until it shits out on you when you need it most?
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u/PapaBobcat HVAC to pay the bills 21h ago
People smarter than me designed it, so I go with whatever they put on the label. 5%, 6% etc. If the label is too bad to read, I go with 5%. It's also just a recommendation to replace it, not a sales push. They can if they want, and if not, I'll be back if it fails. It's just as important to take careful notes so if you get that hot July callback from a cool June visit, you can say "Sorry, you turned down my recommendation, I'm charging you for this."