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My Air Conditioner is not Working

More than half of the time when I pick up the phone, these are the first words I hear.  It is a very common statement without a simple solution until I drill down more to find out specifics.  Here are some of the typical follow up questions that I have for them before I decide that it’s time to get in my truck and head on over:

Is your air conditioner a central unit, or a window unit, or a portable unit? This will let me know the complexity of the system and potential points of failure.

Circuit Breaker Cabinet

When you turn the switch on, does anything happen at all?

  • NO:  Check the Circuit Breaker to see if the system is getting any power.  It that doesn’t fix it, then I’ll be focusing on electrical issues as opposed to mechanical issues.
  • Yes:  Most times this means that the unit is blowing, but not cooling.

Is the Thermostat turned all the way down?

  • NO:  Sometimes (especially at the beginning of the season) thermostats are still set for winter heating temperatures and just need to be adjusted.
  • Yes: Now I’ll be focusing on mechanical issues with the compressor and refrigerant levels.

There are a whole bunch of other scenarios, but this covers the vast majority of the situations that I encounter.  At this point, there is not much left that a typical homeowner can do other than to call out an air conditioning professional.

I’ve had people call and say “My air conditioner is not cooling…can you come out and fill it up with coolant?”  Now I know of a lot of ‘professionals’ in the business that would just say “Yeah, I’ll take care of that this afternoon” then show up and squirt some coolant in and take their fee, but what is really happening is that they are throwing a quick fit at a bigger problem.

Air conditioners should never lose coolant.  It is a closed system.  If the coolant level is low, it is because there is a leak in the system and that is the real problem that should be addressed by a professional.  Also, the fact that an air conditioner is not cooling as expected is not always the result of the coolant level being low, and adding more coolant to the system could damage it.

The dirty little secret in the air conditioning business is that most ‘professionals’ are good at installing new systems (because that’s where the money is), but very few have enough knowledge to diagnose and repair an existing system.  When looking for someone to do air conditioning repair, your best bet is to find them through references from satisfied customers rather than the Yellow Pages.

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