So the question is narrow: can you settle this yourself, or does somebody need to come out with gauges? This page works through it symptom by symptom — what we check, in what order, which part usually turns out to be broken, and how much gets finished on the first visit.
Is there anything I can check myself before I call?
Four things first, because they are what most often turns out not to be a broken air conditioner.
The thermostat. Set to COOL, target below what the room actually is, fan on AUTO rather than ON. Fan on ON is why a healthy system feels broken: the blower keeps running between cooling cycles and pushes room-temperature air out of every register the whole time.
Both breakers. A central system is fed from two places and people check one. There is a breaker for the indoor furnace or air handler your cooling coil sits in, and a separate one for the outdoor condenser — plus a pull-out disconnect in a small grey box beside that condenser, which can get left half out.
The filter. Pull it and hold it to a light. Nearly every symptom below has a restricted filter somewhere in its list of causes, and filters load faster here than the box suggests — cottonwood in June, field and dirt-road dust all summer out toward Parma, Homedale, Fruitland and Ontario, smoke haze in August.
The outdoor unit. It should pull air in through the sides and throw it straight up out of the top. Grass clippings in the fins, a bark bed against one side, cottonwood matted across the coil, a shrub grown in tight — all trap the heat the unit is trying to dump, and a condenser that cannot dump heat cannot cool a house.
If all four check out, stop there. Past this point it is refrigerant under pressure and 240-volt equipment, and it wants gauges and a meter rather than a guess.
Why is my AC running but not blowing cold air?
Go outside while the thermostat is calling. If the condenser fan is spinning and the compressor humming underneath it, the system is trying and something is holding it back. If the fan is still and the box silent, the outdoor unit either is not being told to run or is being told and cannot.
The order we work it: the thermostat call, confirmed at the wire rather than the screen; filter and return airflow; then outside to the contactor, the run capacitor and the actual amp draw on the compressor and condenser fan motor; then the condenser coil, because one packed solid with cottonwood behaves exactly like a failing compressor from inside the house; then refrigerant pressures on both sides, with superheat and subcooling calculated rather than eyeballed, since those numbers separate a leak from a restriction from an overcharge; then the indoor coil and blower; and last the temperature split between return and supply air.
We do not skip to the gauges, because gauges lie when the airflow is wrong. Restricted airflow across the indoor coil produces the same low suction pressure a leak does. Add refrigerant to a system that only ever had an airflow problem and you have overcharged it, and it will be back.
Why won't my air conditioner turn on at all?
We start on the power side, because that is where the answer usually is and it can be tested at rest. Line voltage at the indoor equipment and the outdoor disconnect. The cartridge fuses inside that disconnect, which do blow, and the fix is a dual-element fuse of the same rating. The service switch beside the furnace, which looks like a light switch and gets bumped off. The blower door, because a safety switch stops the equipment running if the panel is not seated.
Then the 24-volt control circuit, where the more interesting failures live. There is a small low-voltage fuse on the furnace control board, and when it blows it is nearly always telling you something: a thermostat wire nicked by a shovel, a wire rubbed through where it enters the outdoor unit, or a contactor coil failed short. Replacing that fuse without finding out why it went buys you very little. Two more catch people out in summer: the condensate float switch, which opens the 24-volt circuit when the drain pan fills, and thermostat batteries.
And a breaker that trips is a breaker doing its job. The faults behind it are usually a shorted compressor winding, a failed capacitor or damaged wiring outside. Reset it once. If it goes again, leave it off.
Why is my AC frozen over in the middle of summer?
The indoor coil is meant to run cold. It ices when it runs colder than it should for longer than it should, and there are two reasons. Not enough heat arriving at it — a blocked filter, closed or furniture-covered registers, an undersized return, a dirty evaporator coil, or a blower turning slow because its run capacitor has weakened. Or not enough refrigerant: a low charge drops the pressure inside the coil, a lower pressure means a lower boiling temperature, and the coil falls below freezing at ordinary indoor conditions. Low charge means a leak.
Switch the cooling off and leave the fan running before we arrive. A coil encased in ice cannot boil off the refrigerant passing through it, and liquid refrigerant coming back down the line is what kills compressors. It is also practical: a frozen system cannot be measured until it thaws, and that is not a short wait. Put a towel under the indoor unit — all that ice becomes water, and the pan was not sized to take it at once.
Why does my AC shut off a few minutes after it starts?
This symptom takes longest to prove, because one cycle does not settle it. We watch a cycle end to end, then confirm on a second. That is why the two-hour block exists on our schedule: across those 440 calls, 483 appointments were booked, and 304 of them at a full two hours.
What we watch for: the compressor's internal overload tripping on heat, which points back at a dirty condenser coil driving head pressure up; a low-pressure switch cutting out on a system that has leaked down; a run capacitor weak enough that the compressor pulls locked-rotor current and trips before it gets turning; a float switch opening as the condensate pan fills; and a thermostat in direct afternoon sun.
Treat short cycling as urgent even while the house is still getting some cooling out of it. Every start is the hardest moment in a compressor's day, and a system restarting every few minutes ages on fast-forward.
Why is there water on the floor next to my furnace in July?
In summer your furnace cabinet is doing a second job. The evaporator coil sits in the sheet metal directly above it, and pulling humidity out of the house is half of what an air conditioner does. That water leaves through a drain line barely wider than a hose.
Those lines plug. The inside of one is warm, wet and dark, and slime grows in it over a season. When it plugs, the pan fills, and then either the float switch trips and shuts the system down — the no-obvious-reason shutdown above — or it goes over the edge of the pan onto your floor. The other causes we find: a pan rusted through, a missing trap, a failed condensate pump, and a secondary drain never connected to anything.
Fix it rather than mopping it. That water is landing on the heat exchanger and burners of the furnace you will want in October — one of the quiet ways a cooling problem becomes a heating problem, covered on our furnace repair page.
What part is usually broken when an AC stops cooling?
We can answer that from our own invoices rather than from a brochure. The parts we replace most often, in this order, are the dual run capacitor, the contactor, refrigerant, a condenser fan motor, a blown fuse, a control board, and, least often of all, a compressor.
That order is not an accident, and it is the most useful thing on this page.
The run capacitor is the metal cylinder inside the outdoor unit that gives the compressor and fan motor the push they need to start and the phase shift they need to keep turning. They are rated in microfarads, and the ones we replace most are 45/5, 40/5, 35/5 and 60/5 MFD at 440 volts. A capacitor rarely fails cleanly. It fades — drifts below its rating, the compressor starts a little harder and hotter every cycle, and the system gets quietly worse for weeks before it stops. Which is why a capacitor measured in spring is worth more than one measured in July.
The contactor is the relay with a 24-volt coil, typically rated 30 to 40 amps, that closes the 240-volt circuit to the compressor every time the thermostat calls. It is a mechanical switch slamming shut thousands of times a season, outdoors, in the heat. Contacts pit and burn, coils fail, and — genuinely — ants get inside and end up welded across them, often enough that we look for it.
Both are inexpensive parts that ride on our trucks, and both live outside in a steel box in full summer heat. They are why so many of these calls end with the system running again on the same visit rather than with a conversation about a new one. The compressor — the failure everybody is quietly afraid of — came up once.
Can you just add refrigerant and be done with it?
We can, and in the middle of a heat run that is sometimes the right thing to do for the day. But refrigerant is not fuel. It is not consumed and a sealed system does not use it up. If yours is low, it leaked, and it will leak again at whatever rate it leaked the first time. A charge added without a leak found is a payment for time rather than a repair — a legitimate thing to buy, as long as nobody pretends it is something else.
Finding it is its own procedure: an electronic detector along the line set and both coils, soap at the fittings and service valves, ultraviolet dye where the leak is slow, and a nitrogen pressure test when the system has to be proven tight. Repairing it means recovering what is left, making the repair, pulling a deep vacuum, then weighing in a fresh charge to the manufacturer's specification rather than topping up to a gauge reading.
Which refrigerant you are on changes the arithmetic. Most valley systems run R-410A; new equipment ships on R-454B, and our pricebook carries R-454B components accordingly. Older systems are on R-22, phased out of production under federal rule, so what remains is reclaimed — our pricebook still stocks R-22 expansion valves and R-22 acid neutralizer, because those systems are still running here. A real leak in an R-22 system is a different conversation from the same leak in an R-410A one.
Will my AC be fixed in one visit?
Usually. Of those 440 calls, 352 were completed.
What decides it is whether the part is on the truck. Run capacitors in the common sizes, contactors, disconnect fuses, thermostats and refrigerant travel with the technician. A return trip means a part that has to be matched and ordered: a condenser fan motor with the right horsepower, rotation and mounting; a blower motor; a control board; an expansion valve matched to the refrigerant and tonnage; an evaporator coil; a compressor. You hear that on the first visit, along with when it lands.
Ten of those 440 calls were booked as a return to our own earlier work. We would rather publish that number than not.
How soon can someone come out?
Of those 440 calls, 135 went onto the schedule the same day the call came in, and 262 within one day.
The honest caveat is the calendar. Sorted by the month the call arrived, that set runs 11 in April, 52 in May, 82 in June, 176 in July and 85 in August. Demand does not build gently — it lands in the week the valley gets its first sustained heat, and it lands on everybody at once. The busiest single day was 17 July 2023, when ten separate households called with an air conditioner that had quit.
So call early in the day rather than after work. And say who is in the house — an infant, someone elderly, or someone with a heart or respiratory condition living without cooling belongs in the first sentence, because it changes where the call sits on the board.
Is my air conditioner too old to be worth fixing?
The age of the unit matters far less than which of the parts above failed. A capacitor, a contactor, a fuse, a thermostat or a plugged condensate line is worth fixing at nearly any age. The conversation changes only when the failure is a compressor, a leaking evaporator coil, or a significant leak in a system running R-22.
Two things catch people out. The outdoor condenser and the indoor coil are a matched pair, so replacing the outdoor unit alone and leaving an aging coil in place is workable in some cases and a poor idea in others. And the blower that moves your cooled air lives in the furnace cabinet, so if the furnace is also near the end, the two decisions are really one — our repair-or-replace walkthrough works that out.
What does it cost to fix an air conditioner?
There is no price on this page and no range either. The number is built out of things nobody can know from a phone call: which component failed, whether the part is on the truck or has to be ordered, whether the system needs refrigerant and which one it takes, whether a leak search is part of the job, how the equipment is reached, and whether what we find turns out to be a repair conversation or a replacement one. So the estimate happens on site, in writing, after the diagnosis and before any work starts.
If the answer does turn toward replacement, that assessment visit is free and carries no obligation. Since 2023 our crews have made 942 heating and cooling estimate visits; of the resulting work, 44 were completed full HVAC system installations and another 420 were installed-equipment and sold-work jobs from estimates (component replacements included) — 464 sold installs and equipment jobs together across the valley and eastern Oregon. Those dispatch records begin in 2023, when the current system went in — the company is a great deal older than the database. If you already know you are replacing, see air conditioning installation, heat pumps and ductless mini-splits.
When is the best time to get my AC looked at?
Not the week it breaks, if you have any say. Put the two patterns in our records side by side. Calls where the air conditioner had already quit peak hard in July — 176 out of 440. Our air conditioning tune-up visits, 320 of them across the same period, cluster in the months before: 59 in March, 48 in April and 66 in May.
Those are the same systems. The capacitor reading low on a meter in April is the capacitor that will not start a compressor in July. The condenser coil half blocked with last spring's cottonwood is the one that drives head pressure high enough to trip an overload on the first genuinely hot afternoon. The difference is only when you find it — in a month when we can book you easily, or on the day it fails alongside every other household in the valley. Our HVAC maintenance page covers that visit.
Which towns do you cover?
Those calls came from Ontario, Fruitland, Payette, Boise, Nampa, Weiser, Meridian, Caldwell, Nyssa, Vale, Parma and New Plymouth, along with Middleton, Homedale, Kuna, Star, Eagle, Emmett, Marsing, Greenleaf and the smaller towns in between.
For the local version there are pages for AC repair in Boise, Nampa, Meridian, Fruitland and Ontario, plus everything we cover near you in Boise and near you in Fruitland.
Who is coming to my house?
American Heating & Air is the heating and cooling division of American Rooter & Drain, a company founded by a Marine veteran and established in Caldwell, Idaho in 1945, serving the greater Treasure Valley since 1945. The HVAC side is licensed and insured in Idaho under HVAC Contractor License LIC# 029771 and works out of the shop at 1005 Commercial Way in Caldwell, which is why the run to Nampa, Boise, Fruitland, Payette and across the line into Ontario is a short one. Since 2023 that crew has taken 825 air conditioning service and repair calls. Those dispatch records begin in 2023, when the current system went in — the company is a great deal older than the database.
The technician who comes out diagnoses the system, shows you what he found, and puts the number in writing before he picks up a tool.
If your air conditioner has quit, call (208) 366-5771. Tell whoever answers which of these it is doing: running with warm air at the vents, not coming on at all, iced over, shutting down a few minutes after it starts, or leaking water. That one sentence decides which parts go on the truck before it leaves the shop.
