An AC freezing up is your system telling you one of two things: not enough warm air is reaching the evaporator coil, or there isn’t enough refrigerant in the system. It looks alarming. Ice on copper lines, frost across the indoor coil, water pooling when it melts. But the ice is a symptom, and the…
The short answer to “what size air conditioner do I need” is roughly 20 BTU per square foot of space you’re cooling. A 500 square foot room needs about 10,000 BTU. That’s the starting point, not the answer. Ceiling height, sun exposure, how many people use the room and what climate you live in can…
Bad AC capacitor symptoms are distinctive enough that you can usually identify the problem from your driveway. The classic one is an outdoor unit that hums without the fan turning. That matters financially. A capacitor is a $150 to $400 repair. A compressor is $1,500 to $3,000. The symptoms overlap enough that contractors occasionally quote…
Outdoor AC unit maintenance is mostly about keeping things away from it. Debris, vegetation, animals, snow drifts and water all interfere with a machine whose entire job is moving air across metal fins. The deep cleaning happens once a year. The rest is a series of small checks that take a few minutes each and…
Here’s the thing most guides skip: most residential AC filters can’t be cleaned. The standard pleated filter in your air handler is disposable, and washing it destroys the fibers that make it work. Some filters are washable, and those need cleaning on a regular schedule. Knowing which type you have determines everything else. Either way,…
Condensation on AC vents happens for the same reason a cold glass sweats on a summer day: humid air is touching a surface cold enough to pull moisture out of it. That’s straightforward physics, not necessarily a malfunction. The question is why your indoor humidity is high enough, or your vent cold enough, for it…
The best AC temperature for summer is 78°F (25.5°C) when you’re home and awake, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Higher when you’re out, and adjusted to preference while sleeping. That number surprises people who keep their homes at 72°F. It’s worth knowing where it comes from and why the exact figure matters less…
Indoor air quality gets discussed mostly by companies selling something to fix it. That makes it hard to tell which problems are real, which solutions work, and which are expensive answers to questions nobody asked. Here’s the short version: the biggest improvements in most homes come from ventilation, humidity control and filtration, roughly in that…
A dirty evaporator coil is one of the most common reasons an air conditioner cools poorly, and one of the least likely to be noticed. Unlike the outdoor unit, which you walk past every day, the evaporator sits inside your air handler where nobody looks. The symptoms show up as weaker cooling, longer run times,…