Keep your cool, Bellbrook
We repair and replace air conditioners, ductless systems included in Bellbrook, Ohio. Repairs, replacements and seasonal tune-ups, all priced before we start. Most calls get handled the same day, and someone answers the emergency line at any hour.
AC repair, replacement, and ductless systems for humid Ohio summers — fixed right the first time, at a price you approve before we start.
Every way a Bellbrook home stays cool.
The AC runs but the air is not cold. What causes that?
Four things, in the order they turn up. A filter or coil blocked enough to starve airflow, which is the cheapest and most common. A failed capacitor, where the outdoor fan spins but the compressor does not. Low refrigerant, which is always a leak rather than something that gets used up. Or a frozen indoor coil, which looks like an airflow problem and often is one. Turning the system to fan-only for an hour to thaw a frozen coil before anyone arrives will not fix it, but it does let a technician find the actual cause instead of a block of ice.
There is water on the floor near the indoor unit.
Almost always the condensate drain. Cooling pulls moisture out of the air and that water has to go somewhere, usually down a small PVC line to a floor drain or a pump. Algae builds up in that line over a season and blocks it, the pan overflows, and you find it as a wet patch or a ceiling stain if the unit is upstairs. Many systems have a float switch that shuts the cooling off rather than let the pan overflow, so an air conditioner that has stopped for no obvious reason in humid weather is worth checking there first.
The outdoor unit is making a noise it did not make before.
The noise usually names the part. A hard electrical hum with the fan not turning points at a capacitor. A metallic screech on startup points at the compressor. A rattle that changes with fan speed is often a loose panel or debris in the cabinet, which is the one worth checking yourself with the power off. A hiss or a bubbling is refrigerant. What they have in common is that none of them improves on its own, and a capacitor caught early is a small repair while a compressor is a system decision.
I am told the system needs refrigerant every year. Is that normal?
No. Refrigerant is not a consumable. It runs in a sealed loop and a correctly working system will hold the same charge for its whole life. A system that needs topping up annually has a leak, and adding refrigerant without finding it means paying every year for something escaping into the air. Ask for the leak to be found and quoted. Sometimes the answer is a repair worth making and sometimes it is a coil that costs enough to change the replacement conversation, but either way you should be told which.