If you turn your air conditioner on high and cold air does not blow out, you know you have a problem. There is no need to panic, however, as you watch the thermometer rise. You may be able to fix the unit yourself by doing a quick check and making a few minor adjustments. You can have that cold air blowing out of your unit again in a matter of minutes with a few simple troubleshooting tips. It may just be the extreme heat and humidity causing the perception that the air is not cool. If it is the first extremely hot or humid day in the cooling season, it may take longer than usual for the air provided by your air conditioner to cool off your room or home. Give it longer than usual to get the air cooled. If your unit is baking in the hot sun, this can also cause it to take a longer period of time to get the air cooled. Give the unit at least 20 minutes and come back and check again. If the unit is in a window and cools off one room, close the door and come back to see if the temperature has gone down.

Check the thermostat on your unit and make sure it is lower than the actual temperature in your house. To test this, put your thermostat about 10 degrees lower than the house temperature and see if the condenser kicks on and starts cooling off the air. For a programmable thermostat, make sure the batteries are not dead. Clean your air filter. If the filter is clogging the air flow due to build up, then your unit is overworking. This will cause the air not to be as cool as the unit is capable of providing. Providing your air conditioning unit with a clean air filter will let it work to its capacity and you will get cool air. Open the unit and check to see if ice has formed inside. Cool air will not be provided if your unit has frozen up. This happens when the unit is on for long periods of time during extreme hot and humid weather. Turn the unit off and leave it uncovered to defrost. You can help the defrosting process by using a hair blower, set on "Low," to melt the ice.

Once the unit is defrosted, put the cover back on and try it again. The air should be cool. Guard against this happening again by turning the unit off periodically for an hour or so. The best time to turn the unit off is while you are sleeping during the night. The cool air will stay in the house until morning and you will not be overworking your air conditioning unit. I am renting a place where the only air conditioner is a window unit mounted in the wall in the main living area. The space in that main room is about 325 sq ft, and it has a 9 ft ceiling on average. The unit is a Frigidaire FAS182H2A1. It looks like it was manufactured in 1999, but I can't recognize any other useful specs on the partially worn labels. So, I don't know what its BTU rating is, and I couldn't seem to find the manual online. Earlier in the spring, I felt it wasn't cooling well, and I took off the front panel to see that it was caked with about 1/8" of dust and pet hair from previous tenants. The landlord removed this, but the aluminum fins were still clogged with gunk.

I tried the only thing that our local Home Depot had for this which was an aerosol can of foaming cleaner, so I sprayed and scrubbed for a couple days. buy 3 ton ac unitIt looks a lot better, but I am not certain the fins are really cleaned out. samsung window unit air conditionerThe air conditioner is still occasionally spitting out what looks like chunks of dried black gunk that has been displaced from between the fins.ac window unit fan Last week it was about 95 degrees F outside, and after several hours of this thing being turned on to its max level, the room cooled down to about 81 degrees (with all doors to other rooms closed). I used a thermometer I had to measure the temperature of the air coming out of the unit, which was between 67 and 68 degrees.

It's only getting hotter outside (ugh), so I'd like to try to do something about this. So, here are my actual questions: How much cooling should I expect from this unit? Is it properly sized for the space? Is there anything I can do to improve its performance? According to this, the Frigidaire FAS182H2A1 is an 18000 BTU device. That's pretty powerful if working properly. The government suggests 8000 BTU for 325 SF. Check your outside coils too and clean if needed. If that is not a problem it could be something internal. partial clog in your expansion valve. If cleaning the outside coils doesn't work, I do not expect repair to be practical. You can buy a new 10,000 BTU unit from Home Depot for $300. It would be reasonable to ask the owner to pay for it. Just for clarification, there are two sets of fins. The inside ones and the outside ones. The outside ones will get caked with pollen, dust, dirt, bugs, etc and form a matte blocking air flow around the fins.

Depending on where you live and how much the AC runs, you may need to clean this yearly. The best way is to open up the entire case and then get in there with water degreaser and a toothbrush to get all the gunk out. Also, as Philip points out, that's a LOT Of BTUs for a very small space. If a unit is oversized, what will happen is that it will cool the space before it can dehumidify the space. So you end up with cold and damp...likely not something you want. I'd second Philip and just go spend a few hundred bucks on a small 8000 btu unit.Do window air conditioners need Freon?There is a type of Freon referred to as R-22 or HCFC-22, and it was most common in air conditioner window units prior to 2010. If there is any doubt as to what type of refrigerant is being used in a window air conditioning unit, the nameplate on the unit should be checked. The type of refrigerant used in the unit should be prominently displayed. A homeowner should never try to purchase or replace Freon on their own, as a special license is required to even handle the refrigerant.