Air Conditioning - Central A/C not cooling after Hurricane Ivan

Hi,

After 9 days we got our power back on yesterday sometime in the afternoon while I was napping. I woke up and the AC was running but the house was still blazing hot. The air coming out of the vents is not cool and the AC will run continuously if the thermostat is left at Cold and Auto or On trying to cool the house. I thought maybe it was a breaker problem and went out to the box and flipped them all off, waited 2 minutes then flipped them back on. When I turned the AC back on it was doing the same thing and I walked out back and noticed the outside unit was doing nothing, no fan activity or anything. I didn't notice the first time when the power came back on if the outside unit was working or not.

Today I got up and decided to try it again, I turned it on and went outside and the outside unit was running normally (as far as I could tell) but still just warm air out of the vents. The AC worked great before Ivan hit and we lost power, no problems.

I really know absolutely nothing about AC units and how they work, I don't know how to go about troubleshooting this without spending money on someone to come out and take a look at it. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Edit: I just turned it on and left it on for 5 minutes and checked the wires coming out the back, both are the same temperature, no warm or cold. I'm not sure if 5 minutes is long enough to be able to tell the difference between them, but there is no difference. Also every so often a small grinding noise is made from the outside unit, seems to come from the fan and lasts only a second or two. It could be just something vibrating, that's what it sounds like, but I figured i'd mention it. Hope this helps

From your short description of the problem I'd say you've done about all the average homeowner can do. You should have two copper tubing lines going into the outside condensing unit. The large one most likely will be covered with insulation, or even some thick black tape to insulate it and to keep it from sweating. That line SHOULD be cold. See if you can find a short section where the bare copper is exposed and put your finger there to get an idea of what it's temperature may be. The other copper tube (smaller) should be warmish and about 80 to 90 degrees. If both lines are of equal temperature then I'd say you can do no more other than call a tech. It sounds like you have power going to the condensing unit because the fan is running. You may have a compressor problem or something could have hit one of the lines and all the refrigerant has leaked out.

The way power is down here. let the fan on inside but Id turn off the breakers to the outdoor unit till you can get a hvac tech to look at it.

ED ;)

Here's a link to another forum where I posted this problem and more has happened since I last made this post. If there's anything you can add please do.

http://www.hvacmechanic.com/forums/resservice/messages/13184.htm

What I get from that other www the last you said . Call a tech .Sounds like you need a new compressor there. If you do, have them put a time delay on the unit. It will help save the unit from FPL power here.

ED ;)