Monday, June 13, 2011

Air Conditioner Blowing Air But House Not Getting Cold

My air conditioner is blowing air but its not cooling the house, what gives?

Here is the situation. Your a/c unit is running non-stop, you can hear it but for some reason the house is not getting colder. What is the matter? Here are some possible reasons and solutions to your problems.




  1. The a/c filter is clogged. Check it and if its dirty replace it with a new one. These filters are really cheap and if this is the problem you are in luck because this is by far most simple fix you can perform.




  2. Your evaporator coils are clogged. If this is the case there is not a good air flow around the condenser unit. See if you can clean them by yourself but depending on the unit you might have to call a service repairman to do it.




  3. Check the fins on the fan located in the outside unit. Are they in good shape? Have they been compromised at all? If the fins have been damaged then you can try to straighten them out as best you can but you may have to replace them.




  4. Low refrigerant. If your central air conditioner is out of or low on refrigerant then its CF pressure will be low and it won't condense and re-condense in your compressor the right way. You will need, at this point, a professional to come out and first, check for leaks, and then fully recharge your refrigerant levels.




  5. The compressor motor. It might be burnt out. You know this is the case because it will not make a smooth sound like it should but a very deep and loud noise. Check the fuse first. It may be burnt out and if that's the case the fix is cheap. But if your a/c motor has indeed worn itself out it will be costly to fix it.



Before you do any of this check the thermostat first. Make sure the temperature is more than fifteen degrees colder than it is outside. If the weather is 90 degrees outside then your thermostat needs to be at 75 on the inside to adequately cool your home.

For more quick tips on air conditioning troubleshooting please click here.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Central Air Conditioning Information : How to Recharge Central Air Refri...

How Your Air Conditioner Turns Hot Air Into Cold Air



Your refrigerator and your a/c work in a similar fashion. The only difference is that instead of only being responsible for cooling a small, closed environment your ac has the difficult task of cooling a whole house, or building.

How exactly does your A/C work? This is a good question to ask because if your air conditioner ever breaks down it will definitely help if you are familiar with its design so you can able able to diagnose the problem and fix it.


Your air conditioner system using chemicals that are designed to turn gas into a liquid and then back into a gas again. Pretty ingenious, isn't it? The purpose of this action is to transfer the hot air that is inside your house to the outside.

As stated earlier your air conditioning system can be split into two main parts, though some people like to say there are three parts. You have the condenser (in which the compressor is in but some people label this a part by itself) and the evaporator. The condenser and the compressor are located on the left or right side of the house inside a square box. The evaporator is located right by your furnace on the inside of the house.

The refrigerant arrives to the compressor in the form of a cold, lower type pressure gas. The device then squeezes the fluid making it really dense making it really dense and hot.

The fluid leaves the compressor as a high pressure gas that is really hot and it goes into the condenser. What happens next? The fan on the condenser act like the radiator of a air and make the heat inside the gas dissipate rather quickly.

When the working fluid then leaves the condenser its a lot cooler and by then has morphed from a gas into a liquid that is under a tremendous amount of pressure. Where does it go next? It takes a trip to the evaporator through a very small hole. Once it gets here the pressure again drops and it becomes a gas.

While the liquid is changing back into a gas it also extracts heat from all the warmer air around it. Its interesting because, in fact, the heat that is found in the air is absolutely needed to separate the molecules from the substance from a liquid to a gas form.

Fans are also found on the evaporator and its used to help substitute the thermal energy with the surrounding environment.

The evaporator also has metal fins to help in exchanging the thermal energy with the surrounding air. When its leaves the evap the fluid is a cold, lower pressure gas.


Cold air is then circulated throughout the house or building via a fan. The hot air in an area weighs less than the cold air so it rises to the top of the rooms where it is sucked out via the vents where it goes back to the evaporator to be cooled again. Heat is taken from it and its blown back into the air ducts to be re-used. The vents for the cold air will usually be found floor level.

The whole process starts over and over again until the temepature in the house is where you set your thermostat. Once the thermostat senses that the temperature of the house is where you want it the whole a/c unit is turned off until it starts to get hot again.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

How Your Central Air Conditioner Works

Most of us have no idea how our central air conditioner system works or how much it works during those hot summer months to keep us cool and comfortable. Truth is, without them, places like Texas, Arizona and Nevada would have a population of ten people but because we have these devices at our disposal millions of people are able to live in those states in a relatively comfortable fashion.

So how exactly do they work? Most air conditioning systems can be slit into two parts, each equally as important as the other. They are the 1) condenser and the 2) evaporator.

The condenser is that rectangular box on the outside of your house. Its not more than usually three feet wide and three feet tall and for some reason its usually green or grey. The condenser's main job is to pull air from the outside, cool it via refrigerant and send it to the house via the coolant lines.

Once the cool air gets to the evaporator it is sent through the duct work to your home in order to cool it. As hot air builds in a home its taken out through the duct work and taken back to the evaporator where it is re-cooled on the coolant lines. The whole system is called a "forced-air distribution system" and it works great.

Ah, what would the world be like without A/C? I can tell you one thing, it would be a very muggy place.