No cold air blowing from the vents

Derrick_2

Well, I noticed that my air conditioning unit outside had become dirty with debris.

I took my power washer to clean the unit off, I set the power washer to a low pressure.

Shortly after I power washed the outside unit, it stopped blowing air from the indoor home vents.

This is a ranch home with cast iron baseboard heat and the air conditioning unit was installed by the previous homeowner. The way the unit is set up is the blower is outside like many standard homes, but the compressor is in the attic.

Any suggestions to what might be wrong with it?

Thanks in advance
Derric

Techman

Derrick

It seems there are a few "it depends" here.Most standard AC systems have the condensing unit with the compressor located outside.Washing a cond unit with a power washer is a little dangerous from the cond coil fins point of view and then depending, the debris may be pushed deeper into the coils/fins.Depending on how dirty and plugged the fins are dictates the ammount of cleaning that is required.Taking the top of the cond unit off w/ the cond fan motor and washing from the inside to the outside first is our normal way of cleaning very dirty coils. Then out to in and in to out again and again until the water comming out of the coil is clean. This past week it took me 3 hours to wash a PLUGGED cond coil on a 4ton system,for a new customer.Then depending on how HOT the compressor was, the internal overload may have opened and it may take several hours to cool down inside the comp body before the overload may reset.Then depending on how carefull you were with the water,the electrical components may be damaged.Then depending on ,is the cond fan motor running ?Did you turn the electrical disconnect back on?No air from the indoor air vents usually means the t'stat is not calling for AC or an overheated motor or a bad motor .A plugged cond coil most times has a dirty evap coil as well.And a standard AC system has the evaporator blower/cooling coil in the VERY hot attic . Is this what you have ?

Eugene_Silberstein

No Cold Air

If the system stopped blowing cold air shortly after the power washing, you might have inadvertantly done something to the electric end of the system.

When the unit was not blowing cold air, was the outdoor fan still turning?

There is a thin cable that connects the indoor unit to the outdoor unit and provides the control signal to the condensing unit. If this cable is not properly secured and the wiring connections were loose to begin with, the high water pressure might have pulled the connections loose.