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Raleigh and Cary police said A/C unit thefts are on the rise, unfortunately. Has anyone else encountered this?
Our family lives in a new construction neighborhood, half of the houses are built. The A/C has not been working for 2-3 days this past week and they call the HVAC technician. He states there are multiple holes in the refrigerant lines in the crawl space, which looks deliberate. He sees this when thieves want to "leak" out the refrigerant for several days, so then they can come back and steal the entire A/C central unit outside. The price of copper is high, and they want the copper inside the unit to sell. The crawl space door is on the side of the house where there is a new construction house being built, just finished framing. The refrigerant needs to be leaked out first, because thieves cannot just cut the lines outside and steal the unit right away.
I would suggest putting good locks on your crawl space door. Also, put a lock on each of your power unit boxes that is right behind your outside A/C units. Thieves usually do not want to cut power lines that are live, and always want to turn off the breaker switch first before stealing. Some motion sensor lights over your A/C units will help too. The refrigerant and line repair was over $400. A stolen A/C unit each would be over $2000 I'm guessing!
My kid's Preschool got hit two weeks ago on Old Apex just past Laura Duncan. That strip there...The preschool, the hair dresser next to it, and a few on the next section.
I would suggest putting good locks on your crawl space door. Also, put a lock on each of your power unit boxes that is right behind your outside A/C units. Thieves usually do not want to cut power lines that are live, and always want to turn off the breaker switch first before stealing. Some motion sensor lights over your A/C units will help too. The refrigerant and line repair was over $400. A stolen A/C unit each would be over $2000 I'm guessing!
There is a power disconnect right next to the outside unit so there's no reason to cut live wires. Second, I don't have a clue as to why a thief would go under the house to "poke holes" in the lines (I guess if they were intelligent they wouldn't be thieves.) A person can simply unscrew the schrader valve in the charge port if they wanted the freon to leak out slowly without noise. Or they could simply cut the line to allow they freon to escape in 10 seconds and within 30 seconds be gone with the entire unit.
There is a power disconnect right next to the outside unit so there's no reason to cut live wires. Second, I don't have a clue as to why a thief would go under the house to "poke holes" in the lines (I guess if they were intelligent they wouldn't be thieves.) A person can simply unscrew the schrader valve in the charge port if they wanted the freon to leak out slowly without noise. Or they could simply cut the line to allow they freon to escape in 10 seconds and within 30 seconds be gone with the entire unit.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Putting a lock on the power disconnect box right outside the unit to deter a thief. This is separate from the breaker switch that might be located in your garage, basement, etc. If it's too much trouble to get INTO the power disconnect box outside, they have to cut the live wire and will just leave.
You would wind up in jail shooting someone outside your house stealing an AC unit. You cannot protect property in NC with deadly force.
That is correct.
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