My Air Conditioner is Not Cooling

The idea for this article came from a case study. A few days ago, a client called us at the office with the following problem: "My air conditioner isn't cooling.”

This call is more common than you might think. It usually occurs especially during the most marked seasonal changes in temperature, although it's true that these temperature differences have not been as noticeable in recent years.

In this case, the client came into his office one morning and felt hot and wanted to alleviate the sensation by turning on his air conditioner. Initially, during the start-up phase, the unit expels air, but after a while, it becomes clear that it's not cold air.

The AC Techs technician travels to the client's business to check the air conditioning system. In this specific case, after several tests, they determined the fault was due to a lack of gas. The unit hadn't been used for a long time; it was several years old, and due to deterioration, it had a small leak in one of the pipes.

In addition to resolving this issue, the equipment was fully serviced to rule out other problems and anticipate potential future incidents.

Gas loading

In this specific case, the fault was due to a lack of gas in the unit , but this conclusion was reached after performing several tests. The first thing to do is check that both the indoor and outdoor units are working properly. To be sure, simply measure the temperature of the units while they are operating.

If both units are cooling properly but we don't notice the cold air, then the unit needs a gas refill. Be careful, when this happens, it's always because there's a gas leak due to deterioration of the unit, the installation, impacts, or vibrations. It's not true that units need to be refilled at least once a year.

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The same applies to car air conditioning . If your car's air conditioning isn't working, it's because there's a leak that won't be fixed no matter how much you top up. This is an easy way for bad professionals to extort money from customers. Our recommendation is that whenever a technician tells you that your air conditioning is out of order due to a lack of gas in the unit, ask them to show you where the leak is and what they did to fix it. Be wary of any technician who, without further investigation, just plugs in the gas and charges you.

You must also be careful with the gas you use for charging. Remember that recharging equipment with regenerated or recycled R22 gas is prohibited for maintenance and servicing of air conditioning units.

Most common causes

In addition to the aforementioned lack of gas, there may be other reasons why the air conditioning unit does not cool.

Before calling a technician, it's a good idea to keep in mind a number of things that, due to their routine nature, end up being left unchecked.

• that we do not have open doors or windows that could let in cold air, especially in areas where the sun shines directly at that time.

• Our air conditioning unit has fewer frigories than we need to heat our room. In this article, we'll tell you how to calculate them: How to calculate the power of your air conditioner.

Once these checks have been made, our air conditioning may not be cooling due to:

• Having a dirty fan, filters, or the external or internal heat exchanger . These three components are common and require periodic maintenance and cleaning. If you don't know how to clean them or can't locate them in your air conditioner, ask your trusted technicians. They will advise you on how and when to do it to extend the life of your unit. In this article, we provide some guidelines: How to clean a quality air conditioner without uninstalling it.

• Start capacitor failure. Our air conditioning units start thanks to the start capacitors. The fan capacitor may stop working, as we'll notice when the indoor unit fan stops spinning. If the compressor capacitor has failed, the outdoor fan will run but the compressor won't; the indoor unit runs but the air isn't coming out cold. One or both capacitors may fail, depending on whether it's the fan, the compressor, or neither that starts.

A rare case in which the air conditioner will stop working, or even shut down, occurs when the outside temperature is so high that it reaches such high levels of condensation that it cannot subcool.

In this article, we've wanted to give you some clues about what could be happening to your air conditioner if it's not cooling, but there are some more that depend directly on the model or manufacturer.