Air is coming out of the vents but the house is not cooling

Why it will not recover on its own

Refrigerant is not consumed. A system short of it has a leak, and a leak does not close up — the charge falls further and the indoor coil starts to ice. An iced coil blocks the air the blower is pushing, so weak cooling becomes no cooling.

The electrical faults do not heal either. A capacitor that has lost capacity will not regain it, and a compressor trying to start against a weak one draws heavy current on every attempt.

Humidity is the part people notice first. July dew points here run near 66°F, so a system in Vineland, NJ spends much of its run time pulling water out of the air rather than lowering the temperature. One losing capacity makes the house clammy weeks before it feels hot.

What the visit involves

A technician measures the temperature split first — the difference between the air going into the return and the air out of a vent. That one measurement separates an airflow problem from a refrigerant problem in the first ten minutes.

Then the outdoor unit: gauges on the system, the capacitor, the contactor, and what the compressor draws against its plate rating. A system found low on charge gets a leak search: topping it up without finding the leak produces the same call next summer.

What to say when you call

• Whether the outdoor unit is running, and whether the indoor blower is
• What the thermostat is set to and what the house is reading
• Roughly when it was installed, and the refrigerant on the outdoor data plate — R-22, R-410A, R-454B or R-32
• Your address and ZIP code, and whether the outdoor unit can be reached

Common questions

The vents blow hard. Does that not mean it works? It means the blower works. The blower is the indoor half, and it will move room-temperature air around all day whatever the cooling side is doing.

Can it just be topped up? Refrigerant is not sold over the counter for this work, so a leak means a visit either way. A system topped up more than once has a leak nobody has found.

It cools, but the house feels damp. Worth a call in June rather than August. A system losing capacity stops removing water before it stops removing heat, and the damp is the earlier sign.