Air Conditioning - Carrier Heat Pump not cooling house

Hi all,
We have a carrier heat pump system in our condo and recently it has stopped cooling the house. The air that comes out of the vents is not very cold. It does not have much force but as far as I can remember the air was always somewhat weak even when it worked well. The air filter was sorta dirty but even with removing the filter altogether the air was still not cold, nor was it much more forceful coming out of the vents.
Outside I can see the fan on the outdoor unit cut on when we turn on the air conditioning. It seems to be running fine. My assumptions is that maybe we need more refrigerant or maybe there is a compressor problem? I am not aware of how to check for either one of those things.
Also the fins outside in the fan/compressor unit does not seem to be dirty, and we vacuumed the fins inside for the air intake. None of this affected anything.
any help would be appreciated
thanks

kldkah

Are you certain the compressor is running when the fan of the outside condensor comes on? You should be able to hear it.

If so, the large copper line at the AC condensor should be cold and wet and small line warm.

Have you checked and/or cleaned evaporator coil recently?

Any idea what the supply temperature from your register vent is? This can be measured with an inexpensive digital thermostat that can probably be purchased at your local hardware store or HD/Lowes.

Before today, has heat pump been operating OK in AC mode this summer?

Any idea of size of heat pump and sq footage of your home?

Post back when you can. Sorry for your trouble.

:(

Don't assume the a-coils are clean, the outside part may be while the inside of the coils could be dirty are plugged, also, might be a goodtime to really clean the outside unit if it hasn't been cleaned in a while.
If your larger copper line isn't cold and wet while the unit is running then you could be low on freon.

Hi,
I didn't get chance to go through all the troubleshooting steps suggested but here is what i found...
The copper line was not getting cold at all, it stayed at basically the temperature of outside. I could see the outside fan start moving but could not hear the compressor doing anything. I tried turning off then turning on the circuit breaker for the ac unit outside, and tried manually removing the fused disconnect and placing it on the off, then back on. This did not make any difference.

My assumptions now are that either the compressor is not working (this ac unit is only about 5 years old now, this was a new condo), or the freon or whatever refrigerant it uses is out, or maybe it is not being supplied with power right now for whatever reason. I will try to get a multimeter to test if it is getting voltage.

Any other suggestions are glady welcomed!

Have a tech inspect your unit, also check the charge, could be low as I said earlier :D