- 60 Hartsdale Rd, Rochester NY 14622
- 7am to 7pm · 7 days a week
- Call an owner: 585 454 8422
If your AC has stopped cooling and you can see frost on the lines, do not turn the thermostat down. That is the instinct and it is the one thing that can turn a cheap repair into a dead compressor. Switch cooling off, fan on, and call. Justin or Colby will come out.
No heat in winter, no cool in a heat wave, busted lines. We answer the phone day or night, weekends included.
Here is the scenario we get called to most in July. The house is not cooling, so the thermostat goes down a few more degrees, and the system keeps running. Nobody looks at the copper line going into the outdoor unit, which by now has frost on it. Once ice builds on the indoor coil, that ice insulates it. The refrigerant inside stops absorbing heat, so it never boils off into a gas, and liquid heads back to the compressor.
Compressors are built to compress vapour. They cannot compress liquid. That is called slugging, and it can wreck a compressor in minutes, which is the single most expensive failure in the system. The frustrating part is that the thing that caused the freeze is usually small. A choked filter. A dirty coil. A leak that needs finding. Cheap problems, if the compressor survives them. So if you see ice, shut the cooling off, put the fan on, and ring us.
Justin VanCassele and Colby Baker run AmeriHeat together. Colby is a veteran. Both owners are on jobs every week across Rochester and Monroe, Wayne and Ontario Counties.
Give them a call. They actually pick up.
Some of these you can check yourself. The rest need a meter and gauges.
Turn the thermostat to off, not down, and set the fan to on rather than auto. That circulates room air over the coil and thaws it safely. It can take a few hours or most of a day depending on how much ice there is. Do not chip at it, you will puncture the coil. Then change the filter while it thaws and call us.
The outdoor unit hums, the fan on top sits still, or the compressor strains and clicks off. That is the classic failed capacitor, the single most common AC repair there is. Quick to test, quick to change, and we carry them.
Start with the filter. A matted filter starves the coil of air and is the most frequent cause of both poor cooling and freezing. If a fresh filter does not fix it, the coil itself may be dirty or the blower is not running up to speed.
Out on bigger lots the outdoor unit gets a season of grass clippings, seed fluff, and dust blown into the fins. Once it cannot shed heat the system runs long, cools poorly, and stresses the compressor. Clear a couple of feet around it and hose the fins gently from the inside out.
A blocked condensate drain backs up and either trips the float switch, which shuts the system down on purpose, or overflows onto the floor. In a humid summer that line moves a lot of water, so it clogs more than people expect.
Gradual decline usually means refrigerant has been escaping slowly. That needs the leak found, not a refill. Adding gas to a leaking system just buys you the same problem next summer and starves the compressor in the meantime.
A system losing performance slowly still copes in mild weather. Give it a seventy five degree afternoon and it keeps up fine. It is only when the real heat lands and the equipment is asked for everything it has that the shortfall shows. That is why so many no-cool calls arrive on the same three days of the summer, and why a fault that had been developing since May announces itself in the middle of a heat wave.
If it freezes again after a filter change, stop. A frozen coil is a symptom, not the illness. Thawing it and restarting is worth doing once, because a clogged filter genuinely is the most common cause. But if it ices up again within a day or two, the underlying problem is still there, and repeating the freeze and thaw cycle stresses the coil and risks the compressor each time.
This is a practical point rather than a sales one. If we turn up to a coil still buried in ice, there is very little to measure. Pressures read wrong, the coil condition cannot be seen, and the charge cannot be checked properly. Getting the thaw started as soon as you spot the problem means the visit is a real diagnosis instead of a wait. Turn cooling off, fan on, and leave it.
We find the actual fault and give you a straight price before touching anything. No trip charge games, no quoting a replacement when a part has failed.
Most no-cool calls are a part, and parts are worth fixing. The conversation changes when the compressor has gone, or when the system runs on R-22 and needs a significant recharge, because that refrigerant has been phased out and is expensive now. On an older unit those repairs can approach what a new system costs. We will show you both numbers and let you decide rather than steering you toward the bigger invoice.
Same two people either way, across Canandaigua and Ontario County.
The spring tune-up is what catches the weak capacitor and the dirty coil before they leave you without cooling in July. No plan required.
AC MAINTENANCE →For the room the central system never reaches, or a house with no ductwork at all. Heating and cooling in one.
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Call the owners directly. We run a real diagnostic, find the actual fault, and give you a straight price before any work starts.
Call, email, or send the form. Not a call center. We will get your Canandaigua system diagnosed and the cooling back on.
