Condo condensor on roof rumbles then no cold air--HELP!

[iimprezu]

Hi guys! I live on a third-floor condo in SoCal (Woodland Hills) and the A/C unit seems to have a mind of its own. First of all, it's not blowing terribly cold air. I'd say it blows around 72. During the past couple of hot months here, you would leave the AC on and it would take from 5pm to 8pm to cool down from 95 degrees to 76-80 degrees inside the unit.

Anyway the real problem began a week ago when I started to hear/feel a loud vibration coming from the roof. Then the air went from "cool" to warm air. It was instantly obvious. Today I turn on the A/C unit and cold air blows out.. all is fine. Then 10 minutes later the rumbling/deep bass noise starts and the cold air dissapears again. I repeated this several times and every time the loud rumbles comes on, the air stops blowing cold. The unit seems to only want to blow cold air for 3-5 minutes at a time then suddenly stops. The condo landlord is sending an A/C guy again on Monday to check it out but I don't think this tech knows what he's doing.


He was sent a month ago to fix the not-too-cold air and he said there was leaves in the condenser and he cleaned it up and said its fine now. But after that it was apparent that the unit was still taking super long to cool down even just a little bit.

[luskys a/c]

It sounds like your Compressor is kicking out on O.L. or high pressure switch.

Once this happens your compressor needs quite a bit of time to cool down to reset and meanwhile your Furnace/AHU will just recirculate your air in your home.

Hopefully the next tech will solve your issues.

[BaldLoonie]

Rather sounds like the fan is quitting after running a bit. Shouldn't be too hard to figure out if they watch it a while.