To clear one thing up - it's $500 for the month of July, $485 for August, $503 for September. Neighbors bill is the same for the same house. Thats why I didn't question in. We also have 9 PC's, a fridge, a dryer, electric stove, iguanas, fish, 4 TV's (roomie has an HD CRT that weighs like 300 lbs - I bet that thing alone uses a kilowatt).
Once it hits may or so it just stays on continuously until mid-october.
TO clear another thing up - its central air and all spaces are cooled. The hot air return is a huge louvered hole in the living room. No returned air from the upstairs, it all gets sucked in through this one vent in the LR - vents are in 3 BR's and bathrooms upstairs, one in the kitchen and LR downstairs. This is 1980's sprawl-building ghetto townhouses that were built when SFL was experiencing tremendous growth - so no real thought was given to how the AC unit actually works, or its efficiency. Without tearing up walls I see no easy way to resolve the return air problem. It's just stuck that way.
On hot days I go out several times in the afternoon - run the hose until the water gets cool and spray off the condensor for about 3 minutes. It noticeably cools the air coming through the condensor unit and the air inside gets noticeably cooler for a bit.
No mice, but boy do we get a lot of lizards in there. Believe it or not, despite the oppressive supervillianish heat ray laser sun that we get in the summer, those little lizards are always looking for heat, and since theres nearly always some water via the hose, thats where they hang out.
I used to work at a place that did heat pumps for your pool so I kinda get the HVAC cycle. One thing that we ARE missing that I think would make a difference is to shade the condensor. It's untouchable in the summer. I could easily cook an egg on that thing.
So I AM regularly cleaning the coils, all the fins are straight, the pressure is right with no leaks, the filter is regularly changed out, I even recently cleaned the evap coils inside the air handler with a degreaser/bleach mix to retard any nasty growths. Got a good deal of slime outta there. I also flushed the drain and made sure the automatic drain overflow turn off mechanism was working and not being activated.
OK so in short the basics are covered. I don't see any suggestions that make me go "OOOOOH I didn't think about that".
I don't own the house, my roommates family does. I live with a girl and her brother and my fiancee any myself - its owned by their dad who is loath to upgrade something that is "working". I don't blame him, he makes no money on us. The unit is likely undersized. If it were mine I'd have already gone 2 steps up on the condensor unit and compressor.
I was considering building a timed water spray mechanism, seeing as how hitting it with the hose cools it down a bit. (sorta like the intercooler water spray deals you see on turbo cars). Anyone ever do something like that?
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