I'm afraid "weird" may have been hijacked by politics, but we heard a weird noise coming from the compressor for our heat pump last night. Incredibly loud banging as if something inside had come apart and was bouncing around off the fan blades or something.

We had had two previous episodes of a singular bang, one Mitzi heard and one that I heard. I thought it was a hard start, perhaps indicative of a failing capacitor, but one occurred at the end of a cycle.

Last night's episode seemed to go on forever, perhaps over a minute. Time enough for me to go outside with a flashlight and try and see what the hell was going on. I couldn't make anything out. The fan was spinning smoothly, but something was undoubted inside getting knocked about violently.

After it shut off, I went out and looked again.

Er, something had died in there.

I think it may have been a bird. How anything could get inside that machine is a mystery to me, but I'll look again this morning after the sun comes up.

There were "remains" of something clinging to the interior of the northwest corner of the top of the enclosure. They had been there for some time, and appeared to be kind of glued there. I saw stuff that may have resembled feathers and bird feet. Pretty gross.

I got a screwdriver and knocked the largest bit remaining off the enclosure, and it fell into the interior somewhere.

Then I noticed other bits of dried ick around the entire interior circumference of the of the top.

Weird.

Of course we're leaving town this morning.

We raised the thermostat to 78° to minimize the operation of the heat pump and spent a warm night.

This morning, it's come on twice since I've been up and no banging. Hopefully, problem solved.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 05:38 Wednesday, 18 September 2024