Air conditioning in Washington DC
Blowing warm, not turning on, making a noise it didn’t used to make. A licensed technician diagnoses it for $89 and quotes the repair before touching anything.
- Diagnostic fee
- $89
- Typical total
- $250 – $400
- Usual response
- Same day
- On site
- 1 – 2 hours
At a glance
Work warranted 12 months
What we usually find
Running, blowing warm
Most often a failed run capacitor — the fan spins but the compressor won’t start. Cheap part, quick fix, and the single most common call we get.
$250 – $400 typical
Won’t turn on at all
Could be a tripped breaker, a failed contactor, a bad thermostat or a blown transformer. Genuinely cheap to genuinely not, which is why nobody quotes it blind.
$180 – $600 typical
Ice on the lines
Restricted airflow or low refrigerant. Turn it off and let it thaw before anyone arrives — running it iced up is how you kill a compressor.
$200 – $1,600 typical
Water around the unit
Usually a clogged condensate drain. Left alone it finds your ceiling, so it’s worth treating as urgent even though the repair is small.
$150 – $350 typical
Short cycling
Turning on and off every few minutes. Sometimes a dirty filter, sometimes an oversized system, sometimes a failing control board.
$150 – $700 typical
Loud or new noises
Grinding is usually a motor bearing. Screeching can be a belt. A hard clunk on startup is often the compressor, which is the expensive one.
$250 – $2,400 typical
Try these first — they’re free
Genuinely. Three of these fix the problem often enough that we’d rather tell you than take your $89.
- 01Check the breaker — both the indoor and the outdoor disconnect
- 02Change the filter if you can’t remember the last time
- 03Set the thermostat to COOL and at least 5° below room temperature
- 04If there’s ice anywhere, switch it off and let it thaw for a few hours
Still not sorted?
Request in the app and a verified company usually accepts within a few minutes.
Ranges are indicative of the DC market, not quotes, and not yet drawn from completed NovaAir jobs. Your price is whatever the technician quotes for your system, and you approve it before any work starts.