Most of us here in Southwest Florida finally have our power back on. But you may have discovered that the power coming back on did not mean your air conditioner came back on to cool your house properly. Here at At Your Service Air Conditioning and Heating, we are doing our best to get to every one of our clients who calls us about their air conditioning issues, but there are a couple of things you can try yourself first (and with how hot it’s been, it’s worth it to get the unit going as soon as possible yourself if you can.). Here’s four steps to restarting your air conditioner’s internal circuit breaker:

  1. Go to your thermostat and set it to “off.” This will stop the thermostat from calling for cooling until you have reset both the external and internal breakers.
  2. Find the breaker box in your home. Most likely, a power surge from the storm overloaded the AC’s circuit, causing the external electrical circuit breaker to “trip.”  So you’ll need to reset it. The circuit breaker box (a grey metallic box) is usually located in these areas: garage, basement, closets, laundry room or an exterior part of your home. Just look for a switch that is “tripped,” meaning that’s it’s moved to the neutral position. To reset the circuit breaker, turn it to the “off” position (right), then the “on” position (left).
  3. Now, wait 30 minutes. During this time, the internal breaker in your air conditioner will reset. During the 30 minutes, keep the thermostat in the “off” position. The internal breaker cannot reset if the thermostat is calling for cooling.
  4. After 30 minutes, head back to your thermostat, set it to cool and make sure the temperature setting is at least five degrees below the room temperature. The thermostat should call for cooling from the AC.

If you followed our instructions and the AC is still not working or your circuit breaker has tripped again, there may be an electrical issue with the AC. IMPORTANT! If a circuit breaker is tripping repeatedly, don’t turn it back on! The circuit breaker’s job is to protect your building, wiring, and equipment by shutting off the flow of electricity when the current flow gets too high. If it keeps tripping, you could risk a fire if you turn it back on.

Schedule an appointment with At Your Service Air Conditioning and Heating, and we can investigate what’s wrong with your AC and fix it.