#1 Problem & Quick Fix with Central Air Conditioning Not Cooling

if your air conditioning system isn't working the way it used to I'm gonna give you three tips that you can do at home yourself you don't need any special tools and it's designed to help you make your air conditioning system perform more efficiently but at the end of the day the goal is to make the air colder so stay tuned and I'll show you more and how to do it all right let's get down to business so what I'm doing here is I'm measuring the temperature of the air coming out of my air conditioning vent now don't panic you don't have to do this part this is the before picture if you will so I wanted to see what temperature was coming out of my air conditioning vent before I did these tips so the number is not really super important what matters is is the difference so this is the before at 63 degrees and the goal is we want to get that number as cold as possible and before you jump and say whoa 63 degrees that's really cold it's really not because if your room is a hundred and you're pumping out a little bit of 63 degree air it's gonna take a long time before you can bring your room down to a 70 or 72 degrees so let's go through these tips and I'll show you what a difference they can make and at the end we'll do it after and see how we did let's start with a really easy tip clean the return vents on your air conditioning system you'll have one or two of these vents in your ceiling sometimes they're on the floor a lot of times these get cake with dust it restricts airflow and that's the name of the game you really want to make sure that you do everything possible to not restrict the air flow so as you can see here just take your vacuum with a dust brush spend a few minutes clean this thoroughly this really can make a difference it's super easy to do and as you can see here as soon as I'm finished the vent is sparkling clean there's really no more dust on the outside now I clean this somewhat regularly but I can tell you a lot of times there's tons of dust so do this first it's super easy next top tip if you talk to any HVAC person they're gonna tell you the biggest problem that they see today is that people buy these incredibly high efficiency filters you can see here I have one installed these are the pleated ones 3m makes some and the issue is they restrict air flow too much and your system was not designed for that kind of restriction if you call manufacturers they'll also caution you against using them best tip I can give you throw them out get the standard fiberglass filter and I'm gonna show you one here and these will make a big big difference you can see how I compare them these fiberglass filters don't look great and a lot of people cringe when they see them they are designed perfectly for your system they'll allow the right amount of airflow and they do protect the system against large particles hair pet dander things like that and they work very well a huge tip to do this so replace it with a fiberglass filter this single tip can make a giant difference in your air flow here I'm turning my air conditioning system on and already I can feel better air flow so with that unbelievably restrictive air filter now put in a fiberglass filter and makes all the difference so I can feel more air going in and more air coming out this is the best tip I've ever gotten from any HVAC engineer attack the number one reason that people call them for air conditioning problems is that their outside unit like you see here gets clogged with dust leaves debris dirt these pull air in all the time so they're almost like outside filters and if they don't ever get cleaned it can be a real problem so first thing you need to do before you do any of this is go to your outside breaker or you have a shutoff and we're going to turn this off this will kill the electricity you're not sure use your inside breaker you want to have the power off before you do this what you see here are the only tools you need to do this job regular garden hose and a bottle of soap now if you have a bottle with a squirt top you'll see why this is handy and it's even better if the bottle just has a little bit of soap now you don't want to have this soap be you know completely concentrated so what I'm gonna do here is add some water and I'm gonna dilute this way down now that the concentration does not really matter you don't have to worry quite how much all you want to do is have it be basically very soapy water with just a little small amount of soap like you see here and I think I used about 20 percent soap and I'm gonna fill this right up and if you've never done this you're gonna get a lot of suds and what I do is I just let the suds go right out of the bottle and the goal is the blue soapy water I just want to have as much of that in the bottle as possible you get your system serviced the tech is gonna clean the outside unit I'm going to show you a do-it-yourself way that's very simple easy and safe and it'll allow you to clean outside unit without any special tools and it may not be as good as an HVAC engineer because they use very caustic chemicals this will absolutely make a huge improvement especially if you've never done it so what I'm gonna do is show you how we apply it all you do is have your soapy water squirt the outside of your unit now the key to this is the top is where your fan is you'll see here that at no point do I spray it in there there's really no need keep in mind your whole unit is designed to be outdoors get wet so none of this is really a hazard you don't have to take tremendous caution but I like using regular dish soap it's safe and easy and cheap and you're gonna have it around so what you're gonna do is start at the top just like I'm doing here squirt the whole unit you're gonna squirt it through the side vents and you're gonna let it soak in as best as possible gravity will do the work so you can really start in the top and just allow the solution to go through but again you're only spraying the soapy solution on the outside vent these sides you do not need to spray it on the top it will not actually do anything there's a close-up of what's going on you can already see the soap and the dirt is starting to flow out of the vents and that's exactly what you want because when your unit is outside it's always drawing in pollen dust debris and that really builds up on the inside so you can see there on the bottom I have some very heavy debris so the next thing you need to to rinse all that soap off as soon as it sat for a few minutes they're gonna use a strong garden hose I would not recommend using a pressure washer you can actually damage the unit with it so just use a garden hose you really don't need a ton of force you're gonna rinse it flood through a lot of water and you can see out the bottom is dirt debris a lot of soap coming out that's all perfect that's exactly why you're doing this so as this gets cleaner and cleaner what you're doing is you're making it easier for airflow and that's really and what you want to do so keep rinsing and again don't be put off by the fact that you're gonna see a ton of soap coming out it's just the nature of the way the fins are inside and with dish soap it's gonna suds up a lot and that just really means that it's doing its job so you don't have to wait until every bit of soap is out but you're gonna want to keep rinsing it until mostly it's just water coming out the bottom but take your time go around from top to bottom this is the most time-consuming part and if you're watching this part of the video thinking geez I don't want to do this part I liked the first two tips I would really tell you this is really one of the most important things you can do I have a good friend who's an HVAC tech many many of his calls are spent because people have these outside units that get absolutely clogged with dirt so if you take a few minutes to even look at yours you're probably gonna be shocked to see how much is in there especially if you haven't had it serviced if you're having a problem with your air conditioning this is a great way to make sure that this is not part of the issue and save yourself a couple hundred dollars in a service call so as you can see on this side here as I'm rinsing there's still a little bit of soap coming out the bottom but it's not nearly what it was before so I'm gonna move on to the front and the other side and again I'm just spending a lot of time to heavily rinse the unit once I use the stream I tend to change the amount of water so it's a little bit more water coming out with less force like I'm doing here it just really make sure that I get all that soap out again this is just household dish detergent so it's not going to do any damage sitting on the fence and it really cleans very well and if you think about it really you wash your dishes with it you can wash really any kind of dirt or grime off so it really actually works very well it's also much safer for your plants compared to the cost of chemicals that the engineers and the techs are going to use now that we're done rinsing all we need to do is turn the power back on I do suggest you wait about 10 to 15 minutes just to let any excess water drip out of the unit but now we can turn it back on and just make sure the compressor is working normally don't forget to you may have your thermostat turned down so even if you turn the power back on it may not turn on right away like mine so you may have to go back inside and turn the thermostat to a colder setting so things look good it sounds great and now we know that the unit is cleaned on the outside so this is the real test let's take a look now that we've done all these things what are we getting for a temperature and you can see here this is like 55 degrees that's basically a 10 degree difference from what we started with that's a great temperature for your air conditioning so this was well worth it it costs nothing just a little bit of time and I hope this video helped you and if you does again please like it and subscribe for more great videos thank you for watching

Channel: Silver Cymbal

Views: 1,498,264

Rating: 4.6739302 out of 5

Keywords: air conditioning, air conditioner, air conditioning (industry), central air conditioner, car air conditioning, central air conditioning, air conditioning not working, not cooling, how to fix air conditioning, how to check air conditioning, not cold, how to fix an air conditioner that is not cooling, not blowing cold air, carrier, ruud, hot air, blowing hot air, air conditioner not blowing cold air, air conditioner not cold enough

Id: _b6p0fkWhCY

Length: 8min 52sec (532 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 20 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/rymendy]

Lmaoooo I bet that little section of the coil that’s behind that compressor under that panel is MATTED

[u/Seven65]

I mean this is obviously done by soneome with very little knowledge, but you can't fault people for wanting to maintain their stuff. If they want to clean their coils, good on them, their system will be better off. Dish soap won't hurt, it was a mess and he probably dicked his lawn, but less crap on the coils. Id take this over a unit where it's caked black from not being touched the last 15 years.

[u/Hubter844]

This is so terrible. Everyone knows you need Palm olive to do a correct condenser coil cleaning. Hack.

[u/ARedHouseOverYonder]

Ok which one of you "HVAC engineers" told this guy about this stuff?! Fess up!

[u/Imdumbfounded]

If I hear one more idiot say pleated filters are bad I’m gonna start slashing tires. They’re only bad if a moron undersized the return air. What’s better? Having your evap coil covered in shit and dog hair?

[u/thelittlestviking]

“If your room is 100 degrees and the system is putting out 63 degree air, it’s going to take awhile to get it down to 70..72 degrees”.

Right there you already know the video is bs. 37 degree temp drop?!

[u/[deleted]]

Not that I would believe this guy but is there anyone out there in the trade that just debunks this kind of snake oil HVAC stuff? I'd be curious as a homeowner.

[u/DiegoUrena]

Haha I literally work up and saw this video on my YouTube feed and was laughing so hard at this guy!

[u/BKHvoc]

Technically slower airflow means colder air. Also better to use the type filter your units airflow was balanced with. And a pleaded filter realy doesnt lower air flow that much if it causes issues your airflow was probably already low to start with.