hey Dad hi I'm here in your house now we're
together my air conditioner is running but it's not cooling well right so what are we gonna
talk about today well we could make this as complicated as we could possibly meaning here's
14 things to check or could go wrong but let's limit it to the two things that anybody could
check and you'll have a pretty good likelihood to either know why it's not cooling or what you
need to do now okay two things to check to know why is my air conditioner not cooling well the
first is your air filter downstairs really easy to access for most people but right down here we
want to find the the filter slide right here and we're going to just pull it out this is a micro
powerguard high efficiency air cleaner but you can just have a regular one-inch filter as well
but we want to make sure that this is relatively clean now when I talk about a filter that is
creating a problem you're gonna see pretty much a mat of dust and dirt over the surface of
it depending on the type of filter that you've purchased you know sometimes the home centers
have these pleat and type filters that can be extremely restrictive to air flow groups it can
almost turn into the equivalent of a piece of cardboard as far as letting air go through it
and a really really restricted air filter can cut down the air flow to the air conditioner to
the point where it's gonna affect how well it can cool and so that's first thing to check do
we have a problem with the air filter okay my air conditioners and cooling well thing to check
number two and that is go outside and look at the outdoor unit this is called a condensing unit
but go outside and look at the outdoor unit you may find a lot of bushes or that have become
overgrown de specially blocking the airflow out of the top of the unit here you want to make
sure everything is trimmed back at least a couple of feet all the way around the air-conditioner
so you've got a free flow of air another thing you're going to want to check is is there dirt on
my condenser coil and it's gonna depend on what kind of cabinet you're looking at as you can see
we've on this particular cabinet we have little horizontal louvers here to know if there's dirt
on my coil you need to look down and up into the condensing unit you should see the surface of an
aluminum coil and it's got little fins on it you should clearly be able to see it you can actually
get dust dirt or cottonwood seeds and completely impact that coil and so it cuts down the airflow
and that is probably the number one the absolute number one reason and air conditioners of coolant
oil but many times if you just look at it like it is here it looks perfectly clean you need to
know how to look in those louvers some will have horizontal louvers others will be vertical
some don't have any louvers at all you know the coil itself is it completely exposed that makes
it really easy but you want to make sure you're clean here so keep everything trimmed back keep
especially above the unit because I'm feeling the hot air being ejected off this unit right here
if we had limbs or something like that hanging down on it we're just causing that hot air to
recycle back through the air conditioner so we want everything cleared away and especially up
above 6 to 8 feet typically so we can discharge that heat away from the air conditioner so those
are the two things now having checked those two things if you really don't see a problem G the
filter doesn't look like it was dirty enough to be a problem or G I'm not really seeing
anything out here call the professional
