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Unfortunately gaining a "through understanding" of all reasons for freeze-up requires a trade school course and a "through understanding" of con games,greed, cheats, liars,high pressure sales, unscrupulous contractors and inept techs requires a life time of hard knocks. If you were my sister and I was out of the country I would. Ask if you paid tech after first visit and if so call contractor to postpone follow up visit until I give them notice. In the interim I would run unit as usual. If unit cools normally I would suspect dirty evaporator coil as being cause of freeze up. Coil cleaning is a routine chore made necessary by poor filtration or damaged return duct. If it doesn't cool at all go outside to see if unit is running. If outdoor unit isn't running I would be highly suspect of tech and call a second contractor. An unscrupulous tech might disable outdoor unit to assure call back. If outdoor is running and it doesn't cool normally you are at their mercy as to what they say it needs. Sorry I can't instill 50 years experience in 25 words or less,perhaps others can do better.
Squirrels or chipmunks.
I think it's fox in the end... there was a substantial damage around the garden yesterday morning and the size of paws indicate it must be fox. It had been spotted around whilst I've not seen a single squirel or rabbit. It's very annoying, we've fixed those holes several times already :( I also identified new gap in a fence that it may be getting in to the garden. Covered that and for now fingers crossed there were no new holes...
We had a dog that liked to dig, and one time managed to dig about two feet under the slab of the house.
Solution. We went down to the store and bought a 20 foot roll of chicken wire. we then staked the chicken wire down along the house through the area the dog liked to dig. Grass grew into the chicken wife and it became invisible. Since it was originally secured to the ground by "u" shaped stakes an and later the grass you could mow over it. If you wanted to plant in the area, it was a matter of cutting a small hole in the chicken wire and planting the bush.
This stopped the dog from digging and solved our problem. So you may consider a similar solution. I often wonder what the people who bought the house thought when they realized the extent of the chicken wire.