Kerry wrote:

I am hoping you can all help me. Here is the story....

We live in a 1.5 year old house. Our AC coils our in our atic, then
we have the blower unit thing outdoors (sorry I don't know the real
names of these things).

We were away for the weekend and left the AC set at 85 degrees. It
was a hot weekend and the outside temp got up over 100 (probably
around 104). Anyway, when we returned home last night, our house was
a very warm 87 degrees. The fan was blowing but no cold air was
coming out. So I went outside and the outdoor portion of the AC unit
was not on. I put my ear up to it and could hear a faint electical
buzz. So it was getting power. Then I passed the condensation drain.
The ground was wet, so the AC had worked properly at least sometime
in the weekend. My next step was to go to the main breaker panel.
Sure enough, the AC was tripped. I reset and it is working fine so
far today.

A few questions....
1) What does the breaker control? The fan in the house was still
running and the unit outside still seemed to have power (since I could
hear the slight buzz). Does the breaker just control the coils?

2) What can cause the breaker to trip? And is that mean something
really bad is wrong?

3) The fact that it tripped concerns me. Is this something that
happens sometimes in really hot weather or is it more likely a problem
with my AC?

4) I have no idea how long the fan in my house had been running
before I came home. My guess is that it had been running for a long
time (many hours if not a whole day) trying to cool the house without
luck. Was that really bad for it? We let it rest overnight before we
tried it this morning.

Thanks all for the help. Out house is still under warranty, but since
it hasn't tripped again, I am not sure what to do. Please advise.

Kerry
could have been something un related to the a/c like i had one year on a
sunday, a very small spider must have been in the wrong place at the
wrong time... it was caught in the realay contacts to the compressor...
blew the fuse and the compressor would not work.. i changed out the fuse
and it still did not get current.. i checked the relay and found the
contacts pitted pretty bad with 1/2 of a spider on it... the other half
was burned up... i was lucky as the old relay was the type you could
service.. i just turned the double sided relay over and used the other
side of the contact and it worked fine....