Before you call anyone, there are a few checks that solve a surprising number of "AC not cooling" calls in five minutes — and a few that tell you the problem is genuinely inside the machine.
The phone starts ringing in Sasaram around the second week of April. The complaint is almost always worded the same way: the AC is switched on, the fan is blowing, but the room simply will not get cold. Sometimes it cooled perfectly well last summer and nobody touched it since.
About half of those calls turn out to be something the owner could have sorted out without a technician. The other half are real faults. Here is how to tell which one you have.
Start with the five-minute checks
1. The filters are almost certainly dirty
This is the single most common cause, and in our part of Bihar it is worse than average. Dust off the Grand Trunk Road, construction dust, and eight months of an unused indoor unit sitting open all add up. A clogged filter chokes airflow, so the air coming out feels weak and only slightly cool.
Open the front flap of the indoor unit, slide the two mesh filters out, wash them under a tap, let them dry fully in the shade, and put them back. Do not put a damp filter back in. If the room improves noticeably, that was your problem — and it will come back in six to eight weeks unless you keep washing them.
2. Check the mode and the temperature
It sounds obvious, but remotes get pressed by children, by cleaning cloths, and by people looking for the torch button in a power cut. If the unit is in Fan or Dry mode it will blow air and never cool. Set it to Cool, set the temperature to 24°C, and set the fan to high.
While you are there: a lot of remotes have a "Turbo" or "Powerful" button that people assume is always on. It is not.
3. Is the outdoor unit actually running?
Go outside and put your hand near the outdoor unit. You should hear the compressor humming and feel warm air being thrown out of the fan. If the outdoor fan is spinning but there is no hum, or if nothing is happening at all, the fault is outside, not inside — stop here and call someone.
4. Look at what the outdoor unit is standing in
Outdoor units reject heat. If one is boxed into a narrow duct, pressed against a wall, buried behind a water tank, or has a creeper growing through it, it cannot get rid of that heat and the cooling drops away. It needs roughly a foot of clear space around it and a clear path for air to leave.
5. Voltage
This one is particular to us. During peak summer evenings the supply in many mohallas sags badly. A compressor that is starving for voltage will hum, trip, and refuse to start, or it will run without cooling properly. If your lights dim and your fan slows at the same time the AC stops cooling, you are looking at a supply problem, not an AC problem — and a stabiliser is the fix, not a repair.
Now the ones that need a technician
6. Ice on the copper pipes
If you see frost or a block of ice on the thin copper pipe at the indoor unit, or on the pipes at the outdoor unit, switch the AC off and leave it off. Ice means either very restricted airflow or low refrigerant. Running it in that state pushes liquid refrigerant back into the compressor, and a damaged compressor is the most expensive failure an AC can have.
7. Cooling that fades over weeks
An AC that cooled well in May and is weak by June, with no ice and clean filters, is usually low on refrigerant. Refrigerant is not a consumable — it does not "get used up". If it is low, it has leaked, and the leak has a location. Any technician who just tops up the gas and leaves without looking for the leak has sold you the same repair again next season.
Worth knowing: a proper gas job means finding the leak, repairing it, pulling a vacuum on the system, and only then charging the correct weight of refrigerant. If someone offers to "fill gas" in fifteen minutes without a vacuum pump, that is not the job.
8. It cools, but the room never gets there
If the AC cools genuinely cold air and the room still will not settle, the unit may simply be too small for the space — a 1-ton unit in a large west-facing room that bakes all afternoon will lose the fight. Curtains, a sealed door, and closing the gap under the door do more than people expect.
What a service visit actually covers
A standard AC service is not the same thing as a repair. A service means deep-cleaning the indoor coil and blower, washing the outdoor condenser coil, clearing the drain line, checking the electricals and the gas pressure, and confirming the temperature drop across the coil. It restores cooling that has faded from dirt. It does not fix a leak or a failed compressor.
Our current charges for AC service, gas charging, installation and repair are listed on the rate list — the same prices everywhere we work, with GST extra and spare parts billed at actual cost after we tell you.
When to book
Get the service done in February or March, before the rush. From the middle of April every technician in Rohtas is booked solid, and a unit that fails in the first week of May waits in a queue. A pre-summer service also catches a slow leak while it is still cheap to fix.
We cover AC service and repair across Sasaram, Dehri-on-Sone, Bikramganj, Mohania, Bhabhua and Aurangabad — the full list is on the service areas page.
Frequently asked questions
It means the indoor unit has power and the blower works, but the cooling circuit is not doing its job. The usual causes are clogged filters, the remote left in Fan or Dry mode, an outdoor unit that is not starting, or low refrigerant from a leak. Check the filters and the mode first, then go outside and confirm the outdoor unit is humming.
Twice a year suits our conditions — a full service before summer starts, around February or March, and a lighter clean after the monsoon. If your unit faces a dusty road or runs most of the day, wash the filters yourself every six to eight weeks in between.
No. Refrigerant is sealed in a closed circuit and is not consumed. If a unit needs gas every season, it has a leak that nobody has repaired. Ask for the leak to be found and fixed, not just topped up.
Switch it off and leave it off until it has been looked at. Ice on the copper pipe means liquid refrigerant can reach the compressor, and compressor damage is the most expensive AC failure there is.
Want a hand with this?
Book a technician at home across Sasaram, Rohtas, Kaimur and Aurangabad. Prices fixed up front, a bill for every job.