It’s May, the beginning of summer here in Southwest Florida, which is the beginning of stormy season. Our wonderful daily afternoon thunderstorms that keep our gardens so green, are also a source of frequent power outages. It usually only goes out for a little while and then comes back on, but sometimes when that happens, your power comes back on, but your air conditioner doesn’t. At Wayne Martin & Son, we get calls about this all the time, and we respond as quickly as we can. However, for comfort’s sake, you may want to try a couple of these tips first to see if you can fix the situation on your own before calling us. After all, you’ll want to get your HVAC system back online as quickly as possible. Quite often it’s simply that the power surge overloaded the circuit and caused the external electrical circuit breaker to “trip.” You’ll need to reset it, here’s how to do that.
Steps to restarting your air conditioner’s internal circuit breaker:
- Set your thermostat to off. This stops the thermostat from calling for cooling until you have reset the external breaker.
- Find your circuit breaker box. The breaker box is a grey metallic box usually located in one of these areas: garage, basement, closets, laundry room or an exterior part of your home. Just look for a switch that is “tripped,” meaning that it has moved to the neutral position. To reset the circuit breaker, turn it to the “off” position (right), then the “on” position (left).
- Wait for 10 minutes. This is the amount of time needed for your air conditioner to reset. During that 10 minutes, you should keep the thermostat in the “off” position.
- Once the 10 minutes is up, head back to your thermostat and set it to “cool.” Make sure the temperature setting is at least five degrees below the room temperature. The thermostat may have a 5-minute delay before the AC will try to start again.
If, after following these instructions, the AC is still not working, or your circuit breaker has tripped again, this is a sign that there may be an electrical issue with the AC.
IMPORTANT! If a circuit breaker is tripping repeatedly, don’t turn it back on! If it keeps tripping, you could risk a fire if you turn it back on. The circuit breaker’s job is to protect your home, wiring, and equipment by shutting off the flow of electricity when the current flow gets too high.
If you’ve reset the breaker and the circuit still trips or the AC does not turn back on, give us a call! Our techs at Wayne Martin & Son will investigate the problem and get your home cool in no time! Give us a call at 239-462-4068. #airconditioningSWFL #SWFLHVAC