Emergency AC Repair in Elgin & the Fox Valley — 24/7 No-Cool Service

Emergency Air Conditioner Repair: What Counts as an Emergency

Some no-cool calls can’t wait. Some can, and we’ll tell you which is which when you call.

Call us any hour if any of these apply. We take emergency calls 24/7 at (847) 224-2420.

• AC not cooling during a heat wave. When it’s over 90°F outside and the house is climbing past 85°F inside, that’s an emergency, especially with infants, older adults, anyone with a health condition or pets in the home.
• Burning smell or smoke from the indoor unit or the outdoor unit. Shut the system off at the breaker and call. A seized blower motor or a shorted wire can start a fire.
• Breaker trips and trips again. Reset it once. If it trips again, leave it off. A shorted compressor or fan motor is pulling too much current, and every reset risks more damage.
• Water pouring from the air handler or through a ceiling. A clogged condensate drain or a cracked pan over a finished space. Shut the system off to stop the water and call.
• Loud grinding, screeching or banging from the outdoor unit. Fan bearings or a compressor on its way out. Turn it off. Running it can turn a motor repair into a compressor replacement.
• Ice on the outdoor unit, the copper line or the indoor coil. Switch to fan-only to thaw it and call. Running a compressor on an iced coil can flood it with liquid refrigerant.

These can usually wait until morning, and a same-day AC repair appointment is the better path: the house is warm but under about 80°F and it’s a mild day, the system is running but cooling slowly, a register is weak, or the thermostat screen is blank but the house is comfortable. Not sure? Call. We’ll help you decide.

AC Not Cooling? What to Do Right Now

While you wait for us, these steps keep the house livable and keep the damage from getting worse.

• If there’s ice anywhere, switch the thermostat to fan-only. Set the system to OFF and the fan to ON. The blower will melt the ice off the coil in an hour or two. Put a towel under the air handler; melting ice can overflow the pan. Don’t run the compressor again until the ice is gone and the cause is found.
• Don’t keep resetting a tripped breaker. One reset is fine. A second trip means something is shorted or seized. Every restart hammers the compressor windings. Leave it off.
• Close the blinds and curtains on the sunny side. Direct sun through windows is the biggest heat load in most Fox Valley homes. Blocking it can keep the house several degrees cooler until the AC is back.
• Keep doors and windows shut during the day. Outside air in July is hotter and more humid than the air already in the house. Open up at night only if it’s cooler outside.
• Run fans, not the oven. Ceiling fans and box fans make the air feel cooler. Skip the oven and the dryer until the system is fixed.
• Move to the lowest level. Basements in our split-levels and ranches stay noticeably cooler than upstairs. Sleep there if you have to.
• Check on anyone at risk. Older adults, infants and anyone with a heart or breathing condition should get to somewhere cool if the house is over 85°F and it’s going to be a while.

Smell gas at any point? That’s a different emergency. Leave the house right away, call 911 from outside, and call your gas utility’s emergency line from outside before calling us.

Emergency Air Conditioning Repair: What to Check Before You Call

A surprising number of no-cool calls are something you can fix in two minutes. Check these first. If it’s still not cooling, call.

• Thermostat mode and setpoint. Make sure it says COOL, not HEAT or OFF, and the setpoint is below the room temperature. If the screen is blank, replace the batteries.
• The breakers. There are usually two: one for the air handler or furnace, one for the outdoor unit. Look for one sitting in the middle. Reset it once.
• The outdoor disconnect. The gray box on the wall near the outdoor unit. A pull-out or a switch inside can get knocked out by a lawn mower or a curious kid. Make sure it’s in.
• The filter. A filter that’s collapsed or packed with dust will freeze the coil and stop the cooling. Pull it out and run without it until we arrive if it’s that bad.
• The condensate float switch. Many systems shut off when the drain pan fills. Look for water in the pan under the coil or in the drain line’s overflow tee. If there’s water, the system did its job and the drain needs clearing.
• The furnace door. On a furnace with an AC coil, the blower won’t run if the panel isn’t fully seated against the door switch.
• The outdoor unit itself. Is the fan spinning? Is it buried in cottonwood fluff or grass clippings? Is there ice on the copper line? Tell us what you see; it helps us bring the right parts.

Elgin summers run humid from May into September, and the first stretch of 90°F days in June or July brings a rush of no-cool calls. Most of them are capacitors and clogged drains that a spring tune-up would have caught. Plan members get priority scheduling when that rush hits.

What the Technician Does When We Arrive

An emergency call gets the same full diagnostic as a daytime one. We fix the cause, not just the symptom.

1. We check in with you first. When it stopped, what you noticed, what you’ve already tried. Then we look at the thermostat and the indoor unit.
2. Indoor first. Filter, blower, evaporator coil, condensate drain and float switch, low-voltage fuse and control board. If the coil is still iced we’ll finish thawing it while we go outside.
3. Then the outdoor unit. Power at the disconnect, contactor, run capacitor tested under load, condenser fan motor, compressor amp draw, and refrigerant pressures with superheat and subcooling.
4. You get a flat-rate price before any work. We show you what failed and why. The repair is quoted flat-rate, and you approve that price before any work. If more than one thing needs attention, you get options.
5. We make the repair. Our trucks carry the parts that fail most in a heat wave: capacitors, contactors, fan motors, fuses, float switches. Most emergency air conditioner repairs are finished on the first visit. If a part has to be ordered, we’ll tell you when it will be in and how to stay comfortable until then.
6. We test it under load. Temperature drop across the coil, amp draws, pressures, drain flowing. You get a summary of what we found.

If the fault is a failed compressor or a large refrigerant leak on an older system, we’ll say so honestly. We can often get you cooling for the short term while you decide whether to fix it or look at AC replacement. Nobody makes a good replacement decision at 11 p.m., and we won’t ask you to.

The Most Common No-Cool Failures We See

In a heat wave, a few parts account for most of the calls.

For the full breakdown of each repair and what it typically costs, see our AC repair page. Heat pump owners: the outdoor unit works the same in summer, and emergency heat pump repair covers the differences.

What Emergency AC Repair Costs

How our pricing works after hours, in plain terms.

Every call starts with a flat diagnostic fee that covers the full system check above. During office hours (9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday) the service call is $130; weekday evenings after 5 p.m. it is $180, and nights, weekends and holidays are $260. Each includes 30 minutes of travel and 30 minutes of diagnostics, and parts are extra. The repair is quoted flat-rate, and you approve that price before any work. Repairs are priced flat-rate, not by the hour, and you see the price before we start. After-hours, weekend and holiday service calls are priced higher than business-hours calls. We tell you the after-hours rate before we dispatch, so there are no surprises when we arrive.

In our area, capacitors, contactors and fan motors commonly run $300 to $1,400. Refrigerant leak repair and compressor replacement can run into the thousands, which is where the repair-vs-replace conversation starts. Members of our maintenance plan get one free business-hours service call a year, 5% off repairs and priority scheduling in the summer rush. Larger repairs can be financed; you can prequalify in about 2 minutes with no impact to your credit score.

What Every Emergency Call Includes

Same standard at midnight as at noon.

An Amana central air conditioner installed by our team. We repair every major brand, whoever installed it, any hour.

• Emergency calls taken 24/7, including weekends and holidays
• Help deciding whether it can wait until morning
• Full-system diagnostic, indoor and outdoor
• Written flat-rate price before any work starts
• Common heat-wave parts on the truck
• Refrigerant handled by an EPA 608 Universal certified technician
• Clear notes on what we found and what to watch for

Want to skip next summer’s emergency? A spring AC tune-up catches most of what’s on this page. Explore all air conditioning services.

Emergency AC Repair Across the Fox Valley

Based in Elgin, we serve homes throughout Kane, McHenry, DuPage and DeKalb counties.

• Elgin
• South Elgin
• St. Charles
• Aurora
• Bartlett
• Streamwood
• Huntley
• Plato Center
• Sycamore
• Carpentersville
• West Dundee
• East Dundee
• Algonquin
• Gilberts
• Hampshire
• Pingree Grove
• Campton Hills
• Geneva
• Batavia
• Barrington
• Hoffman Estates
• Schaumburg
• Burlington
• Marengo
• Wayne
• Sleepy Hollow

Don’t see your town? Call (847) 224-2420. View all service areas.