AC Not Cooling

Walk the system in order and note what you find, because each result narrows the cause. Pull the air filter - if daylight barely passes through it, a starved system can't move enough air to cool, and that alone can be the whole problem. Confirm the thermostat is set to "cool" with the fan on "auto" rather than "on"; leaving the fan on "on" pushes uncooled air and imitates a cooling failure. Now hold your hand over a few supply vents: strong-but-warm airflow points at refrigerant or the outdoor unit, while weak airflow points back at the filter, coil, or blower. Step outside and check that the condenser fan is spinning and the large copper line is cold and sweating - if it's wrapped in frost, you've found why it quit, so shut the system off to let it thaw.

Ranked by how often we actually find them, a clogged filter or blocked return leads the list - it's the cheapest fix and the most ignored. Dirty coils come next; a condenser packed with dust and pollen can't shed heat, so the house never catches up to the setting. Third is low refrigerant, which is never "used up" - it means a leak that has to be located, not simply topped off. After that come electrical faults at the outdoor unit, like a weak run capacitor or a tired compressor that can't build pressure, and finally duct losses, where cooled air bleeds into a hot attic before it ever reaches your rooms.

In Central Florida your AC barely gets an off-season, so a marginal system that would coast through a northern summer runs hard here from spring into late fall. That near-constant runtime bakes dust and springtime oak pollen onto the condenser coil faster than most owners expect, and it wears the refrigerant-side parts around the clock. Rental and vacation homes around Orlando make it worse: a system left running unattended for weeks can quietly lose capacity long before anyone feels it, so by the time the house won't cool, the coil or the charge is often well overdue for attention.