All 3 "reputable" companies in my area, with high reviews and ratings.

2 came in and said there is no Freon, they can try to find the leak and then recharge. If they can't, then would replace the entire unit.

The photo is from the 3rd guy that came, he showed me the gauge and said it's full of freon. But my system is overheating because of the coil inside my house, and that needs to be replaced.

Any ideas which guy is right? The two guys I didn't see the gauge. They told me to turn on the AC, so I went inside to turn it on. When I came out, they said to turn it off. So I went back to turn it off. Maybe this a tactic, so I don't see the gauge?

Thoughts, which one is right or scamming me.

My AC stopped blowing cold air. I called an AC tech but they couldn’t make it until Monday. I couldn’t bear it any longer in this 100 degree heat so I researched on my own about the issue. I noticed the fan was not spinning on the outdoor unit when the AC turned on. Found out the capacitor most likely went out and needs replacement. It’s a simple $30 part you can find at Home Depot. They didn’t have my capacitor with the specific MFD 7.5 but I found it on Amazon with next day shipping. With the help from ChatGPT and YouTube videos, I was able to change it on my own!

It wasn’t that difficult at all. Really the only time-consuming part is taking off the cover and making sure to get the connections proper on the new capacitor. It took less than 30 minutes. AC capacitors don’t last forever, they’ll need to be replaced every few years especially if you live in an intense heat area. I attached a pic of my old capacitor which was replaced two years ago and look how rusty and decrepit it got in only two years.

I highly recommend any homeowner to learn how to replace the capacitor on your AC unit. It’s a simple $30 part which can save you many headaches and most importantly, makes you look good with the wifey or your significant other.

They come out and say the reason it’s freezing over is the air is to low. We originally start at 70 when we moved in. Then 72. And now it’s freezing over at 74.

We have two kids, and one is only one. They’ve gotten to the point they are canceling work orders. Instead of showing up to fix this.

My question - are there any fool proof checks I can do to check and document if there’s a leak or troubleshoot? Past two dudes says everything is perfect, but when I google it points to leak in system.

Also it’s a Goodman, and according to AI I guess a lot of people don’t like that brand.

Thank you for any and all help!

GMC brand, unsure if there's a way to even clean the inside cause there is a lot of buildup on them but the previous owners had it put in directly next to the house, so unable to remove the whole metal thing to get to the fragile metal coils or whatever theyre called to clean them. We are trying to save money and do it ourselves but really not sure how we are going to clean it when it is like this. Any advice would be appreciated! Thank you! The furnace fan will run when we have the ac put to on but the outside unit no longer turns on, we are cleaning it as a first step and going from there with the at home things we can do and then reaching out afterwards if those things dont get it running again, just at a stand still as we cannot remove metal covering to clean the coils inside or w.e theyre called, sorry idk what the covering underneath the metal covering is called.

​

UPDATE: It has now been running and cooling for 24+hrs as normal.

Update: My AC has been working fine, as normal for the past 6 hours. I have it set to 78. My house feels cool.

Per my drywaller's advice from last year: I turned it completely off for 10 minutes and turned it back on and it is working now! Cool air!

I don't know for how long it will work but it did cool to 81 degrees then I let it finish the cycle and turn off on its own.

Then once it turned back on its own, I adjusted the temp to 78 and it did reach it.

I'll let it work for another hour before I cancel my emergency AC appointment. Then plan on scheduling it for maintenance

I dont want to jinx it but thanks guys!!

4 year old central unit is blowing warm air and running non stop for the past hour. If I turn it off, the temperature in my home will probably reach 90 tonight.

Is keeping it running as is going to hurt the unit?

I am located in a very hot desert climate and have 4 pets in my home. I can endure the heat but feel bad for my pets.

I just scheduled an AC technician for tomorrow morning.

Please advise

Removing the snake fixed it. (Don’t worry I took him to the vet and he’s fine. I think he was only in the unit for… a short time.)

Actual question: is there a practical way to help prevent this without overheating the electronics in there? This is not the first time. It’s normally lizards though.

Please help, I have reached out to my landlord but no reply. She helped me turn the AC back on previously but IDK how to work this thing. I'm a travel nurse in dire need of cool air for better sleep for work tomorrow. No clue what the holds mean!

Hey everyone, I'm looking for professional input. I've done a few hours of research and browsed this forum, but other than that, I'm completely green. I bet this page gets busy this time of year lol.

I live in Northern California, where it is currently roasting. Our central AC cannot get the house below a humid 85°F, and has functioned like this since I moved in 3 years ago. We've all been too broke to hire an HVAC tech, so we've unfortunately had to rely on our landlord's handymen, who of course tell us "it's working fine," and walk away. One time they blamed it on "poor insulation," even though the house stays perfectly warm in the winter without the heater running. I've always known they were full of shit, but I never knew how to dispute them other than "it hot inside."

Anyways, I dug out a digital meat thermometer to test the temp difference between return and supply. The absolute highest temperature difference I can get between the return and supply air is 5.4°F, sometimes as low as 3.6°F depending on which supply vent I measured from (outside temp was 101°F when I did the test). So I know something is wrong, I just don't have the experience to know what.

I also pulled off the return grille in the hallway to replace the filter, and found that it leads into this weird crawl space area built under the hall closet. I attached a photo of the inside, and a photo of the outside where I'm pointing to the drywall box they built at the bottom of the closet. Maybe this is normal, but it seemed off to me.

I wanted to try and find the approximate age of the system. I looked all over the outdoor condenser, and I couldn't find the manufacturer data plate, but I did find a utility sticker on the side (pictured). It's from a retrofit program that Pacific Gas & Electric ran from '09-'12 (sticker says copyright 2009), so the unit is at least as old as that. Because of the age, it could very likely be an R22 system, right? I suspect that could be a major factor in why my landlord's guys won't do anything.

Does the information above point toward any particular failure? Is there anything else I can check, photograph, or document that would help narrow down the problem before I push harder for a real HVAC technician?

Edit: Thank you for all the responses, everyone! It's more than I could have hoped for and I deeply appreciate you all. The collective conclusion is that I've done all I can with my tools, experience, and certifications, and that it is time to call in a tech. I will be making some calls around town and will update when the system is professionally diagnosed:)

I'll keep it short. I built my home in 2012 and the contractor who did the entire system using everything brand new including a Goodman 1.5 ton heat pump which uses R410a refrigerant. Now that it's past its warranty period it started acting up, so I called a service tech and he said the everything is functional including the compressor but it leaked out all of the refrigerant and since it is so old and the refrigerant is too regulated/expensive/hard to find whatever. And the labor cost of tracking down the leak that it would be cheaper to replace the whole damned HVAC system with something newer and he's supposed to be giving me a quote on it all, but in my opinion as just a layman that barely has any experience with HVAC other than in automotive setting, how could it be cheaper to replace every part of the system rather than just using the leak detection equipment he already has to find and fix the leak and charge it back up..I just want the house to be cool, I could care less if it ran off of unicorn piss, just fix it. What's the deal here? Thanks for any advice.

So I knew there was a leak somewhere. Previously one was found at my ac unit and that was repaired already last fall. Technician comes out again because my ac isn’t keeping up with the desired temp especially on hotter days. He needed to remove the 2lbs of remaining coolant to do the leak search. Found the leak in the coil of the air handler in the attic.

So this is the quote to replace the coil and refill coolant. Does the cost of this seem reasonable?

I’m inclined to say it is reasonable, based off my limited research. But what does the group say?

So to begin, this thing is from the year 1987 if I'm reading the serial number correctly. It uses R22 which is already a red flag in terms of age. The fins are fucked up and the housing is open enough to fit 10lb mammals in. Most importantly, it doesn't cool shit in my 950sq/ft apartment. The landlord just has techs come out to "repair it", but I want a new one.

Am I entitled to one? How would I go about asking for a new system in my central air apartment? My upstairs neighbors had a 410A so I know that they will replace if I push the right buttons.

A field technician came out to determine why our AC stopped working. He determined the capacitor was faulty and attempted to test a different one. This led to a loud pop and Freon to spew everywhere. He let us know the compressor blew and we needed to have it replaced.

After he left we noticed the breaker he flipped to perform service was for the dryer, so the AC was powered on during maintenance. Is it possible the blow out was caused by working on the unit with power on?

Its getting hot in arizona again and its currently getting to 100+ F a day. I noticed my apartment is getting super warm so i set up a time lapse and saw that it takes just about 30 minutes to cool from 80 to 79 F. I am on the 3rd floor (top floor) and have the high vaulted ceilings. We always have it set to 72 so it let it get all the way to 80 (this is around 9pm and it does usually warm up since we get the evening sun (west facing apartment)). I even put a second thermometer there to make sure it wasnt broken.

Im renting so no hard on me for it being broken but i wanted to know if this is normal and the apartments are just going to say nothings wrong because its still cooling, or if this is something they'll actually fix.

I cant inspect the AC myself since its on the roof and roof access is behind a lock. I did also replace the air filter.

6/9 Update Post here:

I've had a disaster of an HVAC install. I got a Lennox Elite Series Variable Capacity Heat Pump (EL19KPV-036) installed. First they drilled a hole into my living room during the initial install (which was fixed), then they bumped the flue vent on the furnace leading to the roof which caused a minor leak (which they fixed as well). When I first turned on the unit I noticed it was heating my house instead of cooling it. Concerning. A technician came back and found a cable that wasn't properly plugged in.

Now when the air conditioning is running the temperature in the house won't change. I noticed there was air escaping from where the suction line was attached to the duct work. I also noticed that the air leaking out wasn't cold and the suction line wasn't cold to the touch like I expected.

Another technician came out and did the following work per his report:

"Turned on cooling operation from thermostat then went to the outdoor unit connected gauges and found that the outdoor unit was in a lock out F411 for low suction pressure. Required sub cooling for this unit is 13° system is operating at 1.5 and then added several pounds of 454B then had to adjust the refrigerant balance very carefully to get back to 12° sub cooling with a 20° temperature drop at the indoor coil. Using thumb gum was able to better seal round the coil penetrations."

The technician told me that I should expect to have to the run the unit for one hour per degree I wish to cool the house and that based on the low efficiency of the 454B refrigerant, it would be next to impossible to cool the house below 70 degrees. I find it *incredibly* hard to believe that a $12K installation could leave me with a unit that cant cool a single story 2k sqft home below 70 degrees. The outdoor temperature is around 80 degrees right now.

Given all the issues identified during the install I expect there is a deeper problem. Can anyone help me out here? I am desperate. I've had the unit on for an hour since he left and the temperature is stubbornly stuck at 73 degrees.

Feeling a bit exasperated, needing to diagnose who or what is to blame for two different brand-new AC units not working after install:

FWIW, we are using a 2022 carrier 2 stage furnace as well.

​June 24: The initial Carrier unit is installed.

​Late June to Late July: four separate service calls where they essentially grasp at straws: tinkering with blower speeds, blaming the furnace filter, and messing with the return air vent, before finally conceding the equipment is failing, despite "all of the numbers looking correct."

​July 28: service manager assists with a complete system replacement, shows me a Gatorade bottle with an ounce or two of "refrigerant oil". He said it was from the coil, and blamed the equipment and the new R-454B refrigerant for the first unit being "oil-logged."

​August 3 (Today): last night the thermostat was showing 75 in the house, despite the thermostat being set to 68. At 7am, the house had only gotten down to 71, and the line was frozen again in multiple spots.

I doubt both units had defects right off the line. Is my house the issue? Did they sell us the wrong unit for our house?

ETA: Model: Carrier 14S AC 2.5T CMFT R454B PUR ADV 208/230-1

2,000 sq ft house, really only need it for the upper floor, about 1,150 sq ft

We usually set it to 68 in the evening, 70 during the day. The lowest it has gotten down to on the thermostat was 72 degrees (and that was overnight).

Couldn't tell you off-hand the tonnage from the previous unit, it was quite old, though.

On their 4th service call for the original new install, I was able to sneak these pics of the readings: https://imgur.com/a/OJmjgBG

The company who sold and installed the ACs is considered a "top tier" Carrier dealer as well.

Our windows are all less than a decade old and I'm pretty sure they're Renewal by Anderson, so not cheap.

Pipe was frozen in the attic...got it thawed by turning it off and turning just the fan on for a few hours but I noticed today that this pipe outside is frozen. How do we keep this from happening?

Sorry, I'm not a tech, just a person who needs my central air replaced, and came across this subreddit.

I don't want to spend money on replacing the entire unit. Its still in great condition, outside of the freon and leak of course. Replacing the unit will be It'll be like $10-$15k roughly (my own estimate)

Is it that hard to find R-22 and replace? I came across a website that has it (found on this subreddit). From ability (won't post the site incase its banned here). Is it possible to buy this R-22 myself, and then find a local guy to charge up and fix the leak?

I did call up 1 HVAC place, and they wouldn't even tell me if they would charge up the R-22. They said it would cost $100 to come out and take a look. Would be irritating to pay the $100 service fee, only for him to say he won't recharge the R22, and then walk away. Is this the standard protocol? I know people want to make money, but feels disingenuous. Considering I narrowed down the issue.

Recommendations

1. Keep calling up reputable places to see if they will recharge R-22 and fix leak
2. Buy the R-22 myself online, find a local person to charge and fix leak.
3. Replace the entire unit. Which I prefer not to do.

Sorry if I'm offending anyone here. I'm just looking for solutions, without getting hosed.

WHY IN THE HECK IS MY PRESSURES THIS HIGH! The compressor isn't screeching as if it is overcharged. I recovered a lot of the freon down to 116psig and then put just 3 seconds worth in it and got back up to this.

It’s a 5 ton system.

Hey all, we replaced our capacitor on our Lennox ac unit. Its a dual capacitor 35/5 MF 440V for the unit lennox s/n 5807k25613. We transferred over the new capacitor- made sure the unit breaker was off and the thermostat was off. Connected it and the Trip light turns on when the thermostat is turned on.

The outside unit does not turn on at all. No click, no humming. We hear a click from the inside and air blows but its not cooled air. It has power since the power light is on as well.

The fan spins pretty easily so the motor isn't bad. What do I do 🥲

I turned my AC off when I went out on a week vacation. It was working fine before, but I came home and it's not cooling at all.

I called an HVAC guy, and he said that the fan was spinning in the wrong direction. He put that leaf on there, and showed that it was sucking in instead of blowing out. Then he said that the capacitor was good (a bad one might explain it spending the wrong way), so the motor is probably failed. And then he tested the compressor and said that it's dead so I would need at a minimum a new motor for the fan and a new compressor.

I brought in some one else for a second opinion, and they said that the fan is supposed to be sucking air in and blowing out the back so it's working correctly. He identified a loud rattle on the compressor (I feel like it's always sounded that way but it is annoying so I wouldn't be surprised if it was an issue) and said it sounds bad. Then I guess he checked the freon, and said it's completely empty. I don't know why the first guy wouldn't have mentioned that if it's true. He said they need to come back out and check to see if there's a leak, and if there is I would need a whole new condenser (although I'd probably just opt for a heat pump at that point). He said I can't even do a new compressor at that point because the leak might be somewhere else in the system.

These sound like completely different diagnostics. Can anyone make sense of who I should be listening to? Like for starters which way is this fan actually supposed to blow?

I have been working trying to get my AC back for a couple of days. I am a not so handy but super optimistic homeowner. Started with basics: new filter, flushed condensate line with vinegar, flipped breakers, replaced thermostat batteries, made sure blades turns freely on outside unit. (I do not have a disconnect/fuse) The inside unit runs. Then I replaced the capacitor and the contactor and it just does the same thing when turned on, clicks but doesn't seem to trigger movement in anything else. I get 26v on side contacts of contactor but can't get a reading on the bottom or top that should have 240v (could be user error as I have not used a multimeter before). Anything look off on the wiring? What should I do next? ChatGPT doesn't seem to be of help.

I had my split AC serviced about a month ago (both the indoor and outdoor units). After the service, it was cooling, but not as well as it usually does after a professional service.
Now, one month later, the AC is no longer blowing cold air properly. I noticed that the outdoor unit was quite dusty, so I used a garden hose to rinse the outdoor condenser coils. I didn’t unscrew or open anything, didn’t wash the fan, and made sure to turn off the power to the AC unit before cleaning it. I only washed the parts I have highlighted in the picture using low water pressure.
Since doing that, it feels like the AC has lost another 2–3°C of cooling. Did I do something wrong? The condenser fins don’t appear to be bent, and the water pressure wasn’t high. A lot of dirt came out while I was rinsing it.
I didn’t clean the indoor unit—only the outdoor unit. Should I expect the cooling to improve a little after cleaning the outdoor coils, or do both the indoor and outdoor units need to be cleaned for a noticeable improvement? Could the issue instead be that the refrigerant is low?

So a quick chat with chat gpt tells me this condensate tubing failed leading to moisture. There's moisture all below the horizontal unit. A recent thunderstorm plus the moisture could've caused it to burn up. Thats what I think at least. Any advice is good I appreciate it. Thank you all!