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Published: Monday, 31 March 2025 04:14
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Central AC - DIY

Installing a Central AC:

This is NOT a DIY. It's always installed by a professional. There are videos on how to do it yourself, but you would be better installing a ductless minisplit (may be multiple of them) to achieve the same result. Minisplits are DIY and lot easy to replace. Any AC that fails due to leak is a blessing in disguise, go for a minisplit to replace the central AC, and you'll be a free man. 

 

 

Replacement of AC: AC replacement labor is pretty expensive at $4K per installation just in labor cost. It's definitely a DIY, but only for people who have already handled minisplit Installation and repair. Here's 2 part video explaining it:

Part 1 (Replacing outside condensor unit): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR5wIbNrs7Y

Part 2 (Replacing inside Evaporator coil): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIDSNBOpBKg

Part 3 (Brazing and Pressure test): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUwIKPoBYSo

Price: I've been quoted $10K-$20K for single AC replacement (including the Furnace part of the AC that is usually integrated in the indoor unit). $10K-$12K gets you the cheapest AC in terms of efficiency. AC compressors/condensors do come with 5 year warranty, but you can extend it to 10 years by registering on the manufacturer's website within 90 days of installation (time frame varies). My AC was never registered, and it failed right at 8 year mark, with freon completely leaking out. Basically AC cost you > $1K in yearly costs just in replacement every 10 yrs. You can buy a minisplit for less than that, which will work for > 5 years.

 

 

Repair and Maintenance:

 

MAINTENANCE:

Filters: Regular changing of filters is essential not only for the long term health of your AC, but also to lower your electric bills. AC work by pulling warm air in, and then cooling it. So, filters are placed wherever he warm air is pulled in, so that it gets cleaned up before it goes thru the blower and around the evaporator coil. It need to be checked and replaced at all such places. The airflow direction is mentioned on filter, and it needs to be put the right way (basically the arrow needs to be pointing towards the AC evaporator,i.e into the AC system). These filters come in various size, thickness and MERV ratings. Don't go for too high MERV rating (i.e > 9) as they will cause your AC to work harder. Also, filters with higher MERV ratings are more expensive. Choose the right size filter based on your current filter size. For thickness, we used to have only 1 inch thickfilters which needed to be replaced every 3 months. Nowa days (as of 2020), you'll find filters with thickness of 4 inch or 5 inch, which need to be replaced once a year. These are more convenient, but usually cost more than 4X the price of 1 inch thick filters, negating the convenience advantage. Also,they are harder on AC as they are thicker. You can always interchange thickness of filter as long as the space allows for thicker filter to go over there. Thin filters can always be used in place of thick filters, but not the other way round (i.e may not always be possible to replace thin filters with thick filters).

I go with 1 inch thick, MERV 5 or MERV 8 filters. These may be had for < $5 a piece. Assuming 3-4 such filters in your house, you've to plan for ~$60-$80 per year in filters. FilterBuy and Filtrete are 2 top brands, but their filters are 2X the price of Home Depot own brand (HDX) and Lowes own brand (ProjectSource). I bu these in house brands as they perform just as well at half the price. Below are links for these. HomeDepot, Lowes , Costco, Target, Walmart and local grocery chains are few places to buy these filters,  

 

 

TUNEUP:

A lot of companies want to do "tuneup" for your AC and heating system for $100's of dollars. Most of the time, they are not really finding or fixing issues, but actually trying to upsell on problems that don't exist. Home Depot and Lowes offer "AC tuneup" specials for low price of $10-$30 per AC unit. I've used them at $30/unit (total $60 for 2 AC units) and felt it was a total wastage of money. They measure AC freon pressure, check capacitor values, drain water thru the pipe and then try to upsell. You can check all these things yourself. Home Depot and Lowes, both use, ARS Resue Rooter as their HVAC contractor in my area. Their technicians didn't seem interested at all in tuning up anything, or even sharing the details of what they measured (stating that I won't understand these). I never got the report, even though I called them and asked them to send me the report.

AC tuneup deals:

AC Pressure/Temperature:

AC Pressure levels in hot and cold lines and their temps give you a more complete picture of if your AC is working ok. Tuneup people don't always give you the pressure numbers, so measure it yourself. Typical readings are explained in article on "How AC works" in section of "Thermodynamics"

 

 

DIY REPAIRS:

A lot of common problems with AC are easy to fix, and you don't have to sell your kidneys to pay someone to repair it.

Video showing top 4-5 issues with AC issues and repairs (Taddy digest) => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wThzFULXxN8

 

1. Freon Topoff: 

Most of the repair of Central AC is around Freon leaking, which is a very common issue. Some Freon leaking is OK, as you can just top off every couple of years, instead of trying to find the leak and fixing it. However, AC repair companies which come and top off Freon charge a lot of money, usually around $100/lb, while you can get freon for around $10-$20 per pound.

Here's a video detailing how to do it => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1s4wxDBe24

One more excellent 30 min vid from AC Service Tech => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpXZhTRPIXc

Look for High side and low side pressures to be inline with what it's supposed to be. For R410A, you want low side pressure to be around 120PSIG, while high side pressure to be around 250-300 PSIG. It depends a lot on ambient temps (both indoor and outdoor) though. You don't want to target a particular pressure, instead you target for SH (super heat) and SC (Sub cool) values. In above vid, you see that after some refill of freon, SH was 60-37=23F, which was too high. The guy kept adding freon, until SH was 57-47=10F, which was in theballpark as per the chart. 

Link => 

Freon leak detection: This is harder and requires more tools. I've explained it under "Minisplit" section. Look for leak detection by first topping off freon, and checking with "Refrigerant leak sensor". On top of that, you can put soapy water at places you suspect of leak. If the AC is showing < 50 PSI on the plow pressure line (meaning most of the refrigerant has leaked), then you can vacuum out the AC, and then add nitrogen gas to it and do leak detection again. This process is more involved for AC than Minisplit, as the leak can happen at many more places. In an AC, leak usually happens at the evaporator coil, which is usually enclosed and sealed, so it's not possible to get to it, unless you want to unseal the system. Even if you detect the leak in there, there's not much you can do except changing the evaporator coil.

Freon leak Repair: Once leak is confirmed, I believe it's no use to detect the point of leak. Instead go for leak fix, using this cheap repair method that I've shown in the minisplit section (by using leak saver UV dye with sealer). If leak sealer method doesn't work, then you might have to go for leak detection described above by ripping off the seal around evaporator coil, and hopefully leak is somewhere where it could be patched (very rare). Usually the whole evaporator coil has to be replaced, which is expensive. Both the evaporator coil and the labor to replace it is expensive. So, try this cheap repair method and hope that God is on your side !!

 

2. Capacitor Replacement:

A lot of time, your AC will just die (not start at all) on a hot summer day. The most common culprit is the Capacitor that's on the outside unit. It's a dual capacitor (2 capacitors in 1 pkg), and is just connected via wires. The capacitor is usually inside the covering to protect electrical connections, so you have to unscrew the little covering on the side of the unit to see the capacitor. You can measure the cap b/w the 3 terminals via multimeter. The multimeter should show open (or infinite resistance) is the capacitor is good. If it shows close to 0 resistance, that means there' s a short in the capacitor, and the capacitor needs to be replaced. Sometimes the capacitor is not out right shorted, but has a lower capacitance value than what it's supposed to have. That means it''s out of spec and will fail in some time. This can't be detected by a multimeter, but you can buy the more advanced meters which measure capacitance too. This will give you the proper capacitance reading. It's better to replace them if they are out of spec, instead of waiting for them to fail. You can buy these capacitors from Home Depot, Lowes, etc for $10 a piece. The only spec that needs to match is capacitance value listed. It's written in MFD (micro farad) or uF. There are 2 cap values mentioned, ad you need to match with the new one that you are going to replace with. You do NOT need to match the part name from the printing on the capacitor. If you can't read the Cap value, then you need to call the manufacturer of your AC and they'll give you the part number and the cap values. Ignore the part number, as you can buy any brand of cap from anywhere. If a HVAC contractor comes to fix this, he'll charge you $300-500 for replacing these capacitors. It's a 2 minute job and saves you $$$.

Capacitor replacement (DIY HVAC guy) => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQisFmMtAis

The 3 terminals of Cap are: C (common), FAN (fan) and HERM(Hermetic compressor). So, the 2 cap formed are b/w C-FAN, and b/w C-HERM. If you measure cap values b/w these you will see the values. HERM cap (~50uF) is listed 1st on the pkg, and it's always lot higher than the FAN cap (~5uF) which is listed next (i.e HERM_CAP/FAN_CAP). These are the 2 motors in the outside unit => one that cools the condensor (the visible big fan that you see, which is not a very powerful motor) and the other is the compressor motor that does the job of compressing to increase the pressure of refrigerant. This motor has to be lot more powerful to be able to do the pressurizing job efficiently, hence the higher cap.

The colored wires that connect to Caps in my AC are: Red is common, Purple is Fan and Yellow is Herm. It may be same or different colors. Make a note of these colors and what they connect to, so that you connect them exactly as it was before.

Link with details => https://hvactrainingshop.com/dual-run-capacitor/

My 3.5 TON AC from Lennox (for downstairs) read 44.74uF(HERM), 10.06uF(FAN), while specs were 45uF(HERM), 10uF(FAN). So, both the caps were good as they were within 1% of Spec. Even then, I bough one to keep for spare from here (I just looked for MFD 45uF + 10uF MFD, it came with 5 yr warranty, and is less than 1/2 the price of one from Lennox) => https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0932QKL5L

Similarly for 2 Ton AC from Lennox (for upstairs) read 34.5uF(HERM), 4.44uF(FAN), while specs were 35uF(HERM), 5uF(FAN). So, Fan Cap was bad as it was outside 10% spec. Even though the AC is running fine, it's not advisa;e to run AC with Caps which are more than 10% outside of spec. So,, I bought one from same company => https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0932RGKCX

Each of them cost $15 for a total of $30. HVAC Tune up guy gave me a quote of $700 for replacing both. Now that's a ripoff :(

 

 

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Published: Saturday, 22 March 2025 01:36
Hits: 1687

These are stocks that are at year lows. These are large companies, all dividend paying and financially strong enough to keep paying dividend.

  • Target (TGT):
  • Pfizer
  • Accenture: ACN buy at $250, div=2.5%
  • Pepsi (
  • Hormel Foods Corp => HRL, div of $1 on price of $23.
  • Stanley Black and Decker
  • Fedex
  • Baidu:
  • Kohls (KSS)
  • Medtronic (MDT) => dividend aristocrat
  • HPE = ?
  • HPQ = NOT the stock you want, though it has 6% yield at $20 price
  • Kraft Heinz = KHC
  • Bristol Meyers Squibb (BMY) => wait for $40
  • Nike: 21 yrs of dividend inc. $1.6 dividend on $50 stock (5 yr low in price)
  • Monolithic Power Systems (MPWR) => Looks like a perfect stock which went up 100X in last 20 yrs from 2005 - 2025. It makes analog chips, and has been a very small company when it started, but still always profitable.
  • Cisco systems => at $50, $1.6 in dividend.
  • Qualcomm
  • Dell
  • ITW => Illinois Tool works, dividend king, $6 div on $250 stock (earning=$10). P/E=25. worth buying at $150 or so.
  • Colgate Palmolive => CL. Div=2.7%, stock needs to goto 1/2 as it's dis growth is only penny/sh every yr.
  • Eastman chemical EMN => 5% yield, buy at $65 (at $75, it's 4.5% yield), Tangible Book value = $1.3B
  • Humana = currently at $190, buy at $170, div = 1.7%, cap=$24B, Rev=$125B, income=$1B. 10 yr low at $160.
  • Novo Nordisk => At $45, 4% yield, $150B cap.
  • ADP => < $200, 4% yield
  • Wells Fargo (WFC) => buy at $75, yield=2.25%. buy < $70. $250B cap with $150B in tangible book value.
  • INFY => 4% yield at $13.
  • POOL => 5 yr low at $200. 2.5% div, Warren buffer owns it
  • LULU => lululemon, no debt, $20B in cap with $10B in sale and $1B in profit. buy at < $55
  • General Mills (GIS) = more indebted, at 10 yr low, dividend safer at 6%, buy @35
  • Campbell's (CPB) = less indebted, at 25 yr low, dividend risky at 7%.buy @21
  • Unilever (UL) $60 cap=$130B, buy @$50, will be at 10 yr low, with div=4%.
  • Sysco (SYY) @< $60, it's 3.5% div. $30B company, $12B in debt, -$5B tangible book value. Not so great.

 Stocks NOT worth investing:

  • VZW, ATT and other telecom: Too much debt. Not much left after paying Dividend. 
  • Bath and Body Works

 

 

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Published: Saturday, 01 March 2025 00:14
Hits: 1784

Home Owner Association (HOA):

Wiki => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association

HOAs are Associations that a bunch of homes in a neighborhood form. In homes built before 1980's, there didn't use to be associations. The only associations that existed were for "Apartment" like housing complex, where a bunch of homes shared common wall, or common roof, or common ground. Associations were necessary in such cases, since no one owned the land, instead they owned just the air space. Any maintenance work needed for the building had to be shared. So, associations were needed, where associations collected some yearly fees from Homeowners. This money pooled in was used for pay for any ongoing expenses to maintain the "Flat system community". These "flat or apartment" systems are known as "Condo" and "Townhome" in USA. "Condo" are exactly like "flats" in India, where houses are built on top of each other, generally 2 storied. Bigger cities have Buildings which have 10's of floors. "Townhome" are little better than "Condo" in the sense that each house is built on it's own land. To keep price of houses low, houses are built next to each other, where they may share a common wall on one or both sides. However, the hmeowner still doesn't own the land. All of the land in a condo/townhome is owned by the Association (HOA).

Fast forward to 2000's and now even stand alone home with their own land have associations. Infact, no builder builds houses w/o HOA anymore. If you buy any of these houses, you have to become member of HOA and  bound by the HOA rules. HOA also have yearly fees to pay for common area maintainence, etc. These HOA dues are usually $1K/year, but in some neighborhoods go as high as $5K/year. Condos/Townhomes have even higher HOA dues.

HOA Pitfalls:

HOA is a legal "GundaRaaj" in USA. There is a Board for any HOA which comprises of couple of elected homeowners. They go hire a "Management Company" which provides services for a yearly fees. These "Management Companies" take over all the power, and Board members become mere "puppets" of the Management Company. Dues start going up, services start going own. Anh how does it become a "GundaRaaj". Because there is

http://www.poliakoffoncondohoaliving.com/2011/04/enforcing-covenants-rules-and-regulations-in-condos-and-hoas-the-concepts-of-waiver-and-selective-enforcement/

If r4ule hasn't been enforced in years, it cannot be enforced.

Ask for mediation or arbitration prior to lawsuit.

http://www.dallasbar.org/sites/default/files/October%202014%20-%20HOA%20Foreclosure.pdf

Texas property code :

https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PR/htm/PR.209.htm#209.007

Does the unit owner’s debt consist solely of fines? If Yes, that association can't forclose. Tex. Prop. Code §82.113(e).
=>
The association has the right to foreclose its lien judicially or by nonjudicial foreclosure pursuant to the power of sale created by this chapter or the declaration, except that the association may not foreclose a lien for assessments consisting solely of fines.
 
Sec. 209.0062.  ALTERNATIVE PAYMENT SCHEDULE FOR CERTAIN ASSESSMENTS.  (a)  A property owners' association composed of more than 14 lots shall adopt reasonable guidelines to establish an alternative payment schedule by which an owner may make partial payments to the property owners' association for delinquent regular or special assessments or any other amount owed to the association without accruing additional monetary penalties.  For purposes of this section, monetary penalties do not include reasonable costs associated with administering the payment plan or interest.
https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PR/htm/PR.82.htm
 
(12)  impose interest and late charges for late payments of assessments, returned check charges, and, if notice and an opportunity to be heard are given in accordance with Subsection (d), reasonable fines for violations of the declaration, bylaws, and rules of the association;
Illegal fines for delinquent dues:
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Published: Saturday, 18 January 2025 15:02
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Currency Trades:

You'll hear a lot about Currency trades too, where people bet on a pair of currencies and depending on what direction the currencies move, you make/lose money.

Currency Basics:

Currency Pair: A currency pair is the quotation of two different currencies, with the value of one currency being quoted against the other. The first listed currency of a currency pair is called the base currency, and the second currency is called the quote currency. It indicates how much of the quote currency is needed to purchase one unit of the base currency.

Ex: 80 USD/INR = 80 => This implies that 80 INR (quote currency) is needed to buy 1 USD (base currency).

The US dollar (USD) is often used as the base currency because it is considered the world's primary reserve currency. So, most FX quotes are written as USD/<Quote_currency>. The value quoted is > 1 for most currencies as you need more of the other country's currency to buy 1 USD. That makes it easy to quote, as 0.012 doesn't sound good in quoting (if quoting was done in INR/USD). Notable exceptions are USD/GBP,  USD/EURO which are slightly < 1 as of 2024.

The EUR/USD currency pair is considered the most liquid currency pair in the world. NOTE: it's not in the conventional USD/EUR form, with USD being the base currency. This is how it was done historically. The USD/JPY is the second most popular currency pair in the world.

Forex Market:

Forex market is where these currency pairs are traded.

 

Historical Currency exchange rates:

Each country prints their currency, and the exchange rates are decided by the people who exchange one currency for the other. Usually, the cost of same consumable as rice, etc determines how much is one currency valued against the other.  Exchange rate is also dependent on how much printing takes place for one currency vs the other.

Money supply is one of the key metrics that measures the amount of money in the system. M1 money supply measures highly liquid money in circulation - i.e currency, checking a/c and other liquid assets. M2 money supply is the most widely used metric for tracking money supply in any economy. It includes less liquid assets too - i.e M1 + savings deposits (including money market deposit accounts) + small-denomination time deposits (<$100,000) + balances in retail money market funds (less IRA/Keogh balances)

USA had M2 money supply inc from $300B in 1960 to $1T in 1975 and then to $22T in 2025 (M1 money supply was slightly lower at $19T in 2025). So, in 50 years from 1975-2025, M2 supply increased 22X, implying 6%-7% growth in M2 money supply. GDP is another measure of money supply, as inc in nominal GDP usually tracks the money supply closely. Nominal GDP has gone from $0.3T in 1950 to $3T in 1980, and then to $30T in 2025. So, nominal GDP has averaged around 5%-6% in the last 50 years.

So, gold or other fixed assets which can't grow in supply are expected to have their prices go up by the same amount (5%-7%) every year when measured in USD, i.eUSD is depreciating by that amount every year compared to hard currency as gold, silver, etc.

Usually countries where there's lot of money printing happening (i.e higher money supply) are the ones which depreciate against the USD, as USD M2 growth lags those of other currencies causing prices of commodities in other currencies to go up (i.e results in inflation).

USD/INR: INR is Indian rupee (Indian currency). This has historically depreciated by about 5%/yr, even though M2 money supply has avg 15% in India compared to 7% in USA (causing a 8% differential). 

USD/YEN: Yen is Japanese currency. This is about 150 as of 2025, i.e 1 USD buys 150 Japanese yen.

USD/CNY: CNY is chinese Yuan (currency of China). It has historically been around 6, as Chinese govt intervenes to support it around 6-6.5. However, as of 2025, it 's around 7.

 

 

 

 

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Published: Tuesday, 14 January 2025 01:55
Hits: 1821

Deals: Here I'll put some of the deals that are FREE or I believe are worth my money. Most of the deals will have links from slickdeals,.net and doctorofcredit.com since that is where I find the deals from wink

Most of the deals we are interested in are ones where we make free money. There are also other deals where items are on sale for a price below what it would cost to make them. Deals are listed for each year separately. Let's make some moolah !!

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