2 AC Troubleshooting Tasks You Can Try

Posted on: 29 July 2021

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If it's hot outside, you want to have a nice cool inside. But when your air conditioner stops working, then you aren't going to end up with that nice cool interior. In fact, it may even feel hotter inside your house than outside, since you may not be able to get a nice cross breeze through your house. When your air conditioner stops working, you can do some troubleshooting to see if you can get it running or at least eliminate some problems before the service tech gets to your house to repair your AC. So, what are some of the troubleshooting tasks that you can do?

External Safety Switch

Your air conditioner should have an external safety switch that you can use to kill the power if something goes wrong with it. If you flip that switch and turn it off, your air conditioner will immediately turn off. It will also stay off until the switch is turned back on. Generally, the switch is somewhere it can't get banged into easily so that it doesn't randomly turn off. It is worth checking out. You should look near the condenser unit since that is where the switches are usually located. It's worth checking out, and it's something that you can easily do. If you see it, try turning it on. If your air conditioner turns on, that's great. If not, it's time to move on to other things. 

Thermostat

Another thing that you should check is your thermostat. You want to make sure that the switch for it is set to the AC side. Try moving that switch to the center and then back to the AC selection. If that doesn't trigger your AC to turn on, there are other things that you can do with your thermostat. You can try setting it to the coldest possible setting. When you do that, you should hear the air conditioner turning on or the fan start. It may take a couple of minutes for the air conditioner to react to the changed settings on your thermostat, so if you don't get an immediate reaction, give it a few minutes. If it still doesn't work, then you still have a problem. 

If you are dealing with a warm house, you want to get rid of that problem as quickly as possible. There are ways that you can do that. One of the things that you should do is call an HVAC company to send out a service tech for air-conditioning repair. You can do some troubleshooting while you are waiting for the tech to work on your air conditioner.