Kiln Firing Interferring with Air Conditioning

[EclecticTreasures]

Hi all,

Over the past 6-8 weeks we have been having extreme temperatures in the high 90s to triple digits. My kiln is in an upstairs craft room in my home and about 5 weeks ago, we started having problems with our heat pump spontaneously shutting down. We called in a repair man and he gave it a shot of freon, but couldn’t find anything else wrong with it. My husband seemed to think that the ac shut down everytime I fired my kiln, but we couldn’t figure out why, so we didn’t give it another thought. For the next 4 weeks we had no problems and I chose not to fire the kiln because it makes the house so uncomfortable. A few days ago, I had to do a firing for a customer and since the temps were down to a “cool” 95 degrees, I did a full fuse firing with a slow ramp. Lo and behold the ac shut down again! So there is a very definite link between the firing and the apparent overload to my heat pump system.

Has anyone else had this experience? Any suggestions as to how I might get around this – other than the obvious solution of not firing up the kiln when it’s so hot outside? My husband thinks it might help if we blocked the upstairs cold air return, since he thinks the hot air from the kiln room is being sucked directly into the heat pump. Any thoughts??

Thanks, Barb

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