Air Con: Soft Start?

Hey Brains Trust,

I am wondering if any of the air-con guys out there have ever had any experiance with retrofitting a soft start kit to a air conditioner system.

I have a 7kw cassette that is dimming the lights in my house every time the compressor fires (before you ask its wired correctly, own circuit, correct wiring etc)

I spoke to my air-con guy, and he has suggested a soft starter capacitor kit; only issue is I am unable to find a retrofit kit in perth!

I am wondering where i can chase down one of these kits, and also if anyone has any experiance with them (ie: do they actually work?) I would assume it would work as I have another 7kw wall mounted unit that has a soft starter from factory and it doesnt dip the lights at all.

This dimming is driving me nuts, expecially now that the heating mode is on and the compressor fires up every 15 minutes!

Cheers for your time

Hi Memphis, should work ok, not sure where you would get one in Perth though. What brand is it? You could check your phone book for a couple of parts suppliers, Ashdown or Actrol or look up refrigeration parts supplies. There are others I just can't recall their names at the moment, I have been out of the trade for a few years now.

If its a Panasonic,yes retrofit is available, had split system everytime it started lights would dim fractionally ,tech fitted soft start to it, no more problems only took about five minutes to fit, cost around $100,he had to special order it from Panasonic. :2tsup:

Just a followup on this thread: I found a retrofit kit for generic units from a mob called hyper engineering, the product is called surestart6. Arrived this week and is now installed with no more light flicker!

Thanks for the assistance!

Glad to see you found your soft start memphis. Another success story.