HVAC Troubleshooting: What To Do if Your Outside AC Won’t Turn On

There are only a few things that feel worse than waking up on a day that’s forecast to be in the mid-90s with humidity and realizing your AC isn’t on or is on but isn’t cooling. Often, homeowners have the dreadful realization that even though their indoor AC unit is turning on and blowing air, the air that’s coming out is as hot as outside, or very nearly. It could be that the indoor unit continues to turn on and tries, in vain, to cool the house, because the outdoor AC unit isn’t coming on at all. It’s understandable to panic in this moment, but you don’t need to. This isn’t an unusual problem, and there are some things you can do yourself before calling in the pros to help.

Check the Power

If you’re lucky, this problem can be as simple as a tripped circuit breaker or an unplugged unit. Check to see if your outdoor AC has power, and if not, see if you can get it turned back on. A circuit breaker that trips repeatedly, even over the course of several days or weeks, should still warrant a call to your local HVAC company, because it might be a sign of a more significant issue.

Check the Thermostat

Make sure the indoor thermostat wasn’t accidentally adjusted, and that the switch on your unit (if applicable) is set to “cool” and not “heat”. You definitely don’t want to pay for a service call from an HVAC technician just to realize someone bumped a switch!

Check the Air Filter

It might feel unintuitive if the problem is with the outdoor AC unit, but a blocked AC filter on the indoor side can trip safety mechanisms that shut down the outdoor unit. Make sure the filter is clear enough that air can pass easily through, and see if that fixes things.

Call in a Professional AC Company for Help

If none of these things has yielded the desired result, it’s time to call in the pros. Call your trusted, local HVAC company, explain the problem, and tell them all the things you tried that didn’t fix it (that lets us eliminate a few things from the possible list of culprits). We’ll make an appointment to come out and get things working as soon as possible. The good news is that there are several easy and relatively inexpensive fixes that could get your AC unit running again quickly (like a failed capacitor or blown fuses) in situations like these, so don’t stress: this might not be a sign of a major problem.

Make Plans for Regular Maintenance

This isn’t going to help you today, but it might prevent you from having to deal with this again in the future: make a plan for having your HVAC systems serviced at regular intervals (once in the spring for your AC, once in the fall for your heating system). Checking on these components helps get them taken care of before a critical failure, and before the hottest and coldest days of the year have arrived. Think of it like your car — you don’t wait to break down on the side of the highway to check to see if your oil needs to be changed, so you don’t want to wait for the hottest day of the year to discover your AC coolant is leaking. Many HVAC companies offer a maintenance club or service schedule: take advantage of this offer and keep your heat and AC running without incident all year long.

Here in Cincinnati, the experienced HVAC technicians of Jansen Heating & Cooling are here to help with your AC problems all year long, whether you’re planning for regular maintenance or you just realized that your outdoor AC unit isn’t running … in July. We’re here to help. Our experts can fix the problem quickly and get things going again. We handle the HVAC headaches so you can get back to the more important parts of life.