Today I Learned How to Reset My AirCon—Here’s How

I moved to Florida a few years ago and obviously, air conditioning is an essential part of a home here. It gets HEAVY use so it’s had problems way more frequently than I ever experienced in my previous living spaces. It seems like every 6-8 months there’s something going on with it. First it wasn’t working so we replaced the thermostat with a new one, then it wasn’t working so we sucked out the evaporator drain line, the next time it was another case of needing to clear out the drain line again, and when it started acting up in the last week I was expecting I’d have to have the servicer come out again.

It seemed weird to me that the same issue (the air still works, but it won’t run long enough to get to the set temperature) seemed to keep reoccurring, so I did some Googling. One of the suggestions was that it could be a dirty filter so I checked that—a little dirty but not nearly as dirty as shown in the video. So I banged it out and stuck it back in. Then I got suspicious about the orientation of the filter because everyone made sure to say it needed to be in there correctly, but when trying to replace it the way I had taken it out, it didn’t fit. So I realized there was a little bar blocking one side and a notch in the filter that I figured must match so I was like “oh no this has been in here wrong and that’s Bad”.

At that point I did some more Googling and came across something that suggested the evaporator coils might be dirty if the filter was in there wrong way. So I tried to follow a video and open it up. Unfortunately the bolts were stuck. I found some WD40 and sprayed them all and left it all for a few days because I was tired of fussing with it.

Yesterday I finally came back to it and the WD40 had helped with all but one of the bolts. I managed to be able to peer inside the handler but with the one stuck bolt I couldn’t get it all the way off enough to reach inside and actually clean anything so I gave up on that and closed it all back up, hoping that was not the fix. Next, I decided to try sucking out the drain line myself. I didn’t have a wet vac, so today I went and bought one and came home to try it out.

I did a quick search and found this video about how to do it: https://youtube.com/shorts/Gybcwy7Uo9c?si=QfVXhoWAAe0IG36L
So I flipped the breakers and tried it out. After a couple minutes, the vac started smelling burnt and I opened it up to see nothing was inside. I wasn’t sure if maybe the cap needed to be on on the inside where the line started (I had left it off worried it would burn out the vac if it was still on) or if there needed to be more liquid or maybe there was a clog or something. I decided to wash the back windows while I was waiting so I ended up being like, the instructions said to make sure hands and feet are dry and I just got water all over so I’ll wait until tomorrow to try again. In the meantime, I poured a kettleful of boiling water into the drain line, followed by a healthy pour of vinegar, just to try another method of cleaning out the drain line.

But when I tried to turn the AC back on (by flipping the breakers)….nothing happened. The thermostat came back on, but there was no sound. I waited a bit thinking maybe it just needed time to start up again, but after five minutes there was still nothing. I panicked a little thinking I might have turned them on in the wrong order or something and broken something. So after fussing with the app and the wall thermostat, I Googled it (again). I found a manual that didn’t help me, but that I realized had a page that showed what the codes on a little screen inside the handler meant.

I used my phone to take a picture of the code and discovered that it meant there was too much liquid in the drain line. So I got the wet vac back out, put it on the box it came in so it didn’t touch the wet ground, turned off the breakers again, and tried vaccuuming it out again. A little bit of water went into the vac tube, but not much. The vac tube fit pretty well over the drain line pipe but I thought maybe not tight enough, so I got a towel (suggested by one of the videos) and wrapped it around where they met and tried to create a little better seal. I also put the cap back on the inside end. This time I got some water out. Not a ton, maybe a half inch in the 3 gallon vac reservoir. But after a few minutes of that it was smelling burny again so I called it.

I tried flipping the breakers again. Nothing. Getting warm inside. 🥲 I did even more Googling. My findings suggested I needed to reset the AC unit. So I spent several minutes looking for reset buttons on all the units and found nothing, so I decided to follow another video which said that to reset the AC, I needed to turn the AC off on the thermostat, then turn the breakers off, then wait a few minutes, and then turn the breakers back on.

I followed the instructions anxiously and when I had followed them all, turned the AC back on (at the thermostat).

IT STARTED UP AGAIN.

And it just turned off after cooling all the way to the set temperature. I’m feeling very proud and satisfied. So if your Goodman AVPTC37C114BB air conditioner isn’t cooling all the way to temperature and turning on and off after short bursts (and the drain line isn’t clogged and the filter isn’t dirty)—try resetting it! There’s no button, you just turn off the thermostat on the wall, then turn it off via the breakers, wait a few minutes to clear it out fully, and then turn the breakers back on and turn the thermostat back on. I’m going to be very pleased if this is something I can do if (when) the issue occurs again. Apparently it’s normal to have to reset it if it’s being a little funny, so this is great to know.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.