Central ac/ heater (electric)...The heater quit working in the mid of the night, only cool air is exiting the vents. Everything else seems normal except the air is not warm anymore. We need warm air, PLEASE help!!

Yes, it must be vented to the outside, even if you're using central AC, too. The reason being is if you don't vent it to the outside, the hot air and humidity that normally goes thru the duct and out the window, will stay in the house and your Central AC will have to run longer and harder to overcome this rise in heat and humidity. In addition, the room that the portable AC is in, will get extremely hot & humid.

Hope this helped you. Please let me know. Thanks.

To make sure that there is not a problem with your blower test it on cool. if it runs good. then start the heater on auto and it should be okay. but still supervise the operation for about 5 mins. if you still smell something burning . then call an AC Technician for help.


Albert Saavedra
AC Technician
Fort Worth/Dallas TX
773-627-8766

most like it the motor windings are burn and you need to replace the blower motor

It's most likely an airflow problem, you say you had the vents closed? Icing up is normally caused by lack of load (air flow) or loss of refrigerant charge. Make sure all your vents are open to allow for as much airflow as possible and that your filter is clean. Some units do not work well on low airflow setting when the outdoor temps cool down at night.

check the filters if it needs cleaning....or check the refrigerant level if it is below normal

Your AC cooling efficiency is low when he ambient temperature is high and naturally it cools well when the outside temperature drops.

Please remove the filter on the grill and try to clean it under the tap water and after removing all the dust fix it back to the unit. This would increase the cooling efficiency of the unit.

Your AC is also five years old. Please avoid frequent opening of doors or windows.

Ensure that the exhaust fan and the blower of your unit are functioning normal.

The technician might not have done a proper job in fixing the area where the refrigerant would have leaked out. Please check the refrigerant pressure to ensure that no further refrigerant leak has taken place. Or even servicing your unit he would have punchered the tubes resulting in very slow leak of refrigerant resulting in no cooling or less cooling. It takes around a month to feel the pinch of it and the refrigerant. One fine morning after sometime the unit will run and it would start throwing hot air instead of cool breeze!

I would guess your freon has slowly leaked out, and now simply needs to be recharged. You can buy an AC recharge kit with R134 at Walmart or someplace, and do it yourself quite reasonably. If it doesn't cool after that the way everything else seems to be normal, it would probably have to be the temperature control switch.

change your Heater Control Valve. I've seen a quite a few of them do this and it's almost always the valve

Sounds like your compressor is locked up or is running under a sevre load you would be best to call a professional

there is a vent opening linkage for the top vents if you had removed panel for sterio install this linkage might have come loose or the wiren to electric relay to open top vents came loose

also vent doors on front of a/c vents are turned to the closed position

also quite possible the passenger blower motor compartment door in side the blower mode has something blocking entrance

also your truck might be equiped with a blower motor filter i read that these need to be changed out during normal filter replacements the filters for ford i didnt know they started using filters for a/c on reading this since 2000