The outside condensing unit of your central air conditioner is the most obvious and easily located part of the unit. But there is also a vital secondary unit called the air handler, which is often found within the furnace inside your home. While the condensing unit starts off the cooling process, the air handler contains parts that are vital for the cooling process to actually complete and provide you with comfortable air.

Here are three key parts to making your AC air handler working properly, what happens if one of these parts breaks, and how an air conditioning repair company can help.

Evaporator Coils

The entire cooling process starts, after you push the thermostat, when the compressor inside the condensing unit pushes out a gas refrigerant that will move through and fuel the entire system. The refrigerant goes through a chemical change to become a liquid before moving inside to the air handler and into the evaporator coils.

The evaporator coils put the refrigerant through another phase change, which changes the chemical back into a gas. This phase change will cause the surface of the coils to become cold. And it's the coldness of the coils that provides the cooling source for your air.

Dirty coils can fail to transform the refrigerant efficiently or at all. You can clean dirty coils using a store-bought no-rinse coil cleanser. Broken or bent coils will need replacing by a trained HVAC technician.

If your coils keep icing over and freezing up the system, you likely have a refrigerant issue that needs to be evaluated by a professional tech.

Blower Fan

A motorized fan within the air handler circulates warm air over the evaporator coils, which cool the air, and then pushes that cold air out of your vents. If that fan should fail to work for any reason, you won't receive cold air inside your home even if the rest of the air conditioning unit is working perfectly.

You can do a quick check of the fan by standing next to the air handler while the unit is running and listening for the sound of the blades spinning. If you don't hear the fan in operation, call a service tech in to check on and replace the fan, if necessary. Your air conditioner won't provide you with comfortable air until the problem is fixed.

Drainage

Evaporator coils create condensate as the phase change occurs. This is natural and normal. The air handler has a drain pan at the bottom to catch this condensate. The water then leaves the air handler either through a drain pipe, which the water moves to due to gravity, or with the assistance of a condensate pump.

If you have noticed water on the floor around your furnace, you likely have a drainage issue. The problem could stem from a clogged drain pipe, a broken condensate pump, or evaporator coils that are freezing up often and producing more condensate than normal. If you don't fix the problem, you could wind up with water damage on the floor outside the air handler and within the furnace itself. For assistance, talk to an AC repair professional.

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