Home / AC repair / Ice on the lines

Ice on the lines?

If you see ice on the lines, turn the system off & give us a call. Running it only makes things worse.

Do this now

Thermostat to Off. Not Auto, not Cool. Off.
Fan to On. Moving room air over the coil thaws it faster, usually one to three hours.
Towels at the air handler. All that ice becomes water & the pan may not keep up.
Pull the filter while you wait. If it's packed, you may have just found the cause.

What it usually is

Low airflow

A dirty filter, a dirty coil, a blower slowing down, or too many vents closed. The coil gets colder than it should & the moisture on it freezes. The fix is airflow, not refrigerant.

Low refrigerant

Less refrigerant means a colder coil. Ice at the air handler & on the big copper line is the tell. If it's low, it leaked, & we find the leak instead of topping it off every summer.

Blower fan not working

If the indoor fan quits, nothing moves over the coil & it freezes in minutes. Motor, capacitor or board. We find which.

Condenser fan not working

The outdoor fan stops, pressures go sideways & the indoor coil can ice up too. Usually a capacitor or the fan motor.

Running it too cold

Setting it to 65 when it's 68 outside can freeze a perfectly good system. Keep it 72 & up. It's Florida, it'll get back there by noon.

What it costs to find out

Residential$95$130 after hours

Commercial$125$160 after hours

We can't diagnose a coil while it's a block of ice, which is why the first step is turning it off. Regular hours are Mon to Fri, 7am to 5pm. Written price before anything gets fixed.

From the gallery of gross

Ice is airflow. Airflow can get obstructed with a dirty one of these.

See the gallery of gross

Questions people ask

One to three hours with the fan on. Overnight if you leave it all off. Don't chip at it, the fins bend.

Yes. Liquid refrigerant that didn't boil off in the coil goes back to the compressor as liquid, & compressors don't pump liquid. That's the expensive version of this problem.

If it was the filter, no. If it was a leak, yes, & each time is harder on the compressor. The diagnostic tells you which one you have.

Think comfort. Think Aphex.