The peak heat of summer is starting to ease, and it’s tempting to assume the AC can coast for a few months now that it isn’t running flat out every afternoon. In most of the country that’s a reasonable call. In Pinellas County it isn’t, because the system barely gets
The thermostat reads 74 and the system is clearly working, but the house still feels sticky, the sheets feel damp, and everything from doorknobs to countertops seems to hold a film of moisture. Cooling a home and dehumidifying it are two different jobs, and in Florida’s climate a system can
The thermostat says 72 and most of the house feels right, but one bedroom or the room over the garage never quite gets there. It’s one of the most common complaints we hear, and it’s rarely a sign the whole system is failing. Usually it means the air isn’t reaching
Every AC eventually forces the same question: is this worth fixing, or is it time for a new system? Get it wrong in one direction and you spend money extending the life of a unit that was going to fail again in a few months anyway. Get it wrong in
A breaker that trips once might be a fluke. A breaker that trips every time your AC kicks on, or trips again a few minutes after you reset it, is your electrical panel telling you something is wrong with the system pulling more current than it should. It’s tempting to
August is the hardest month of the year on a Florida air conditioner, and it’s normal for a system to run longer during the peak of summer heat. But there’s a difference between “running more than usual” and “never shutting off while the bill climbs every month.” If your system
A system that won’t turn on at all is different from one that runs but doesn’t cool. No hum, no fan, no response at the thermostat usually means power isn’t reaching the unit, or something is stopping it from starting in the first place. Before you assume the worst, there
A quiet hum in the background is normal for an air conditioner. A new sound is not, and it’s usually the first sign something has changed inside the system before it fails outright. The good news is that different sounds point to different problems, so the noise itself is a
When your air conditioner starts pushing a bad smell through the house, it’s easy to spray some air freshener and try to ignore it. But the odor coming out of your vents is your system telling you something, and in a hot, humid Florida summer the message is usually worth
If your air conditioner keeps kicking on, running for a minute or two, and then shutting back off, over and over, you’re watching what technicians call short cycling. A healthy AC in a Florida summer should run in longer, steady cycles that pull heat and humidity out of the house.
