My studio and office are in the upper room of my house. 2nd floor. 

Last night I came up here to work on a guitar part for another caker's song and turned on the air conditioner.  About 10 minutes later it was still hot, so I just kept working. An hour went by..... still hot. Finished and got up to check the thermostat. Hummmm strange.... it is on cool.... the set point is below the temp in the room, AC should be working.

Shut it off time for bed...worry about it in the morning. 

That was last night.... today, another 80 degree + day... it's warm. Turn on the AC.... go down stairs and check the compressor outside. We had some problems with it a few weeks back when it wasn't running the compressor to heat the rooms.  Had to run it on heat strips for a few nights. We had it serviced and it worked fine..... until....... 

Look out the window in the kitchen....OK... the fan isn't running. Go outside and check the circuit breaker. It's tripped.... ok so I reset it. Fan fires up compressor starts up..... circuit breaker kicks off 4 seconds later. Reset and try again.... same thing. Dang..... double dang..... 

Not looking good. Looks like the compressor may actually be locked up for real. This means a complete new HVAC package for the 2nd story rooms. Anyway, waiting on the repair guy who installed and services it to show up to check it out maybe tomorrow. 

Got to have AC up here in the summer... when my daughters come home from school for the summer and on weekends.... oh yeah, got to have AC running. Besides, it just makes the studio so much nicer to work in. 

Well, there goes the new toy budget.  You'll just have to record w/ the same ole guitars.  cheaper than sweating a warp in them, anyway

Ouch. That's bad. 

Strangely enough, we've actually had to turn up the heat on a couple of occasions since we've moved here. Last night again. Personally, I like a very cool house, but my wife, not quite as much. 

At the condo where we lived, I had had the AC on for a couple of weeks already. So I'm thinking that the summer here in this house may not be as bad as it would have been somewhere else. As long as I stay in. :)

82 degrees in New York today. The sandals came out, complete with milky white feet. In fact the amount of bright white flesh on display in Manhattan today was frightening. 

yeah, it's nice in the mornings up here.... and the repair guy can't be here until Friday in the morning.... so..... 

Atleast it started before the heat of the summer.

They should have a light work load right now to get ya squared away compared to when its hot outside. Most this time of year will have their guys doing maintenance tune ups just to keep them busy.

Who knows, maybe its something simple and don't need replaced. Sometimes when a comp locks, ya can get a BIG knockometer (Hammer) and smack it good and it frees it back up .  Seen it work a few times as an emergency quick fix.  Then that might not even be the problem-who knows?

Anyway, hope they get it taken care of Herb 

Herb,

At least yours went out in the Spring.  Ours went out last summer in July....in Texas....over 100 degrees.  Not good.  We had to have the entire unit replaced and it took over a week to get on his schedule and replaced.  If we did n't have some family in Dallas it would have been a pretty miserable week in July.  I have always said that Texas needs to put up a monument to the man that invented AC.

As I read the post, I was think 'circuit breaker, circuit breaker'. This happens to me a lot in spring when first starting up the AC. When that does the job, what a relief. Sorry that your issue is bigger. But as Mike said, better now than mid-summer.

Every spring I had to replace a fuse with my A/C...  No idea why.

 85 here in the North east today.....seems you have similar weather there. Maybe...just maybe it's a shorted connection outside the compressor somewhere. That's the optimist talking. Sometimes a contactor can hang up and drain too much current.

 Being in HVAC, I have been a little busy around here....Like others have said it couldn't have happened at a better time. You have the time to get it fixed  before the big heat comes.

 Look for wire "rub throughs" or bad connections to the compressor or very possibly a start capacitor.Check everything but the compressor first. If the windings are shorted to ground though...it's not good.