Air Conditioning units vary greatly in their reliability. Some are going to be more likely to freeze up and be less reliable than others. Most of the time, though, an AC unit freeze-up can be attributed to one of a handful of causes. And no matter which unit you buy, issues in your system leading to a frozen unit are bound to happen.

To troubleshoot a frozen AC unit you just need to know some of the basics of how an AC unit works, and you’ll be able to pinpoint your problem in no time. Here are some of the basics of AC operation that might help you figure out why your unit is freezing up.

One key misunderstanding about AC units is that they work by creating cold air. It’s more accurate to think of them as working by removing the warm air from your home and taking it outside. The system accomplishes this with the use of refrigerant which travels between the inside and outside of your home, transferring heat along the way.

There are various stages in the heat transfer process, each that has the potential for system failure resulting in a freeze-up. Inside your home, the warm air is drawn over the evaporator coil, which cools the air. A fan then blows the cooled air through ducts to the various outlet points. At this stage, the refrigerant draws heat from the air and turns into a gaseous state as it travels to the compressor.

At the compressor, the pressure and temperature of the gas is increased to prepare it for condensing. This is usually done via two plates pressing toward each other. The refrigerant is now in a vapor state and is superheated, so traveling outdoors it transforms back into a liquid state. The condenser, located outdoors, cools the liquid refrigerant and it gets sent back to the evaporator inside to repeat the process.

This was a quick summary of how a standard air conditioning system works. As you can see there are a lot of parts and components involved and each of them can fail, creating the potential for a freeze-up on the condenser outside. If freeing up airflow or recharging your system doesn’t work, you might have a much more serious problem. Ultimately a profesional should help you with your maintenance and repair. Contact Dale HCS in Santa Rosa, CA at 707 526 5709 to have a representative schedule time to check out your system.