After three weeks of the outside unit being down thanks to a buggered contactor that had fused (so the unit wouldn’t shut down unless you pulled the fuse), it was nice to finally get the replacement part and install it. It was pretty much a drop-in replacement moving the wires one at a time and now the heat pump is back in working order just in time for a near 90 degF day! 🙂

The only really scary part is that cylinder next to the contactor…the run capacitor. If you don’t properly discharge what is effectively a massive battery used to start the fan motor turning, you will regret it. We used to discharge big 15,000 microfarad capacitors against the chalk tray of the blackboard in electronics class to encourage the first years to leave our kit alone. The big snap and arc of the discharge never failed to suitably impress the frogs that there were things laying about they didn’t need to touch…and then we’d leave a few discharged capacitors on our table to reinforce the rule. It never failed! 🙂