The house is warming up fast and the vents have gone quiet or started blowing warm air. Stay calm. In the first hour, what matters is keeping people safe and ruling out the simple causes in the right order.
Before you touch the AC, deal with the heat. Pick the coolest room in the house, usually a shaded interior room with few windows, and move everyone into it. Close the blinds and curtains on sun-facing windows, keep that room's door shut, and run a ceiling fan in the room you are using. Fans cool people, not rooms, so turn them off in empty ones.
Drink water steadily, even if you don't feel thirsty. Check first on the people who get into trouble fastest: babies and young children, older adults, anyone with a medical condition, and pets. A cool damp towel on the neck and wrists helps. Never leave a child or a pet in a parked car, not even for a minute.
Know the warning signs. Heavy sweating, dizziness, headache and nausea mean it is time to cool down right now. Confusion, fainting or hot, dry skin can be heat stroke, and that is a 911 call, not an HVAC call. If the house is getting unsafe, go somewhere cooler: a relative's home, a store, a library or a local cooling center. Dialing 211 can point you to one that is open.
Start at the thermostat. Make sure it is set to COOL, the target is a few degrees below the room temperature, and the screen isn't blank. A dead display often just needs fresh batteries.
Next, the filter. A clogged filter chokes airflow, and in a Tucson summer a coil can ice up after a day or two of hard running. Slide the filter out. If it is gray and you can't see light through it, replace it.
Then the breakers. Many systems have two, one for the indoor unit and one for the outdoor unit. Confirm both are fully ON. If one has tripped, switch it all the way off and back on, one time. If it trips again, leave it off. A breaker that keeps tripping is protecting you from a real fault, and resetting it over and over can make that fault worse.
Now step outside and look and listen without opening anything. Is the fan on top spinning? Is there a steady hum? A hum with a motionless fan, or a completely silent unit, is worth reporting. Back inside, look for frost on the copper line or the indoor coil. If you see ice, set the thermostat to OFF and the fan to ON so airflow can thaw it, and don't chip at it. Whenever you switch the system off, wait about five minutes before starting it again.
Here is what not to do. Don't open the outdoor cabinet or pull off panels, because the parts inside can hold a dangerous charge even with the power off. Don't spray a running or scorching-hot unit with a hose. Don't keep running a frozen system, and don't keep flipping the breaker or thermostat hoping it catches. And don't buy a can of refrigerant: if a system is low, it has a leak that needs to be found, and handling refrigerant takes EPA certification.
Treat it as an emergency if there is a baby, an older adult or anyone medically fragile in the house, if you have no cooler place to go, or if the house is heating faster than you can manage. Call right away, too, if you smell burning, hear buzzing or popping from the unit, see smoke, or the breaker trips again. In that case switch the system off at the thermostat and the breaker first. For flames or heavy smoke, call 911. Our emergency AC repair in Tucson runs around the clock.
It can reasonably wait until morning if everyone is healthy, you have a room that stays tolerable or somewhere else to sleep, and the night is cooling off. You can still call any time. We offer 24 hour AC repair in Tucson, so there is no wrong hour to ask.
The more we know before we arrive, the better prepared the technician is. Short and specific is perfect.
When we arrive, we diagnose with gauges, not guesses, and you will know the repair cost before we start. A service call is $120, or $190 after hours. We are licensed and NATE-certified, and we serve Tucson and nearby communities; see our service areas. Once you are cool again, a spring tune-up through HVAC maintenance is the best way to avoid a repeat.
Healthy adults can often manage a few hours in a shaded, closed-up room with water and fans. It is not safe for infants, older adults, pets or anyone medically fragile once the house keeps heating. Move them somewhere cooler and call us.
Once. Switch it fully off, then fully on. If it trips again, leave it off and call. Repeated resets can damage equipment and hide a real electrical problem.
Yes. We are open 24 hours, seven days a week. A service call is $120, or $190 after hours, and you will know the repair cost before we start work.
Generally no. A typical system cools at the same pace whether it is set to 72 or 65; it just runs longer. Set a reasonable target, and if the house never reaches it, call.
We are open 24 hours and we diagnose with gauges, not guesses. A service call is $120, or $190 after hours, and you will know the repair cost before we start.
