3 Bad Air Conditioner Unit Smells and What To Do To Remove The Stench?

Is there something funky (smelling) about the space you’re in? If you’ve checked everywhere for the source and concluded that it’s coming from inside your AC unit, then don’t panic. While these smells are avoidable, if they happen, it’s probably something small that a quick AC repair job could fix.

The best practice to avoid any sort of malfunction is preventive maintenance and staying up to date with your HVAC services in Las Vegas. At Infinity Air LLC, our teams ensure that the client is aware of all necessary upkeep during AC installation. Check out our maintenance plans to get full use out of your unit before you need an HVAC replacement. Browse our HVAC maintenance plans here.

If you’re already at the point of a not-so-ambient stink, then you need to turn the unit off and call your HVAC company so they can begin their investigation. While a stink could indicate several things, you could narrow it down.

Some issues are more common than others. If the air conditioning smells like any of the following, then you may be dealing with these repeat offenders:

Fish

This smell suggests melting plastic. This means that something is going wrong internally, and the unit is overheating. It may even mean that there was something fishy about your AC installation services, or you’re using it in a way it wasn’t designed to handle.

Either way, you have to switch off the air and wait for the professionals to arrive.

Garbage and Rotting Eggs

Sometimes, when you smell a rat, it’s a rat. Rodents and other pests sometimes crawl into ducts in search of warmth and get stuck. So that rotting smell could be an animal decomposing. To safely extract and clean up after the dead body, air conditioning services might have to dismantle the HVAC.

Don’t try to DIY this, as only professional HVAC services will be able to identify whether or not the putrid perpetrator did any further damage.

Sooty and Gun Powdery

This means that your filter needs a clean or that there’s some sort of electrical failure inside the unit. The former is unlikely if you’ve been regularly servicing your unit, but the latter is more than a simple fix. You need an HVAC contractor to identify why it happened so they can help you prevent it in the future.

If you used a well-reputed company for upkeep, it never should have happened. If left unfixed, the unit will become a fire hazard. 

An employee who can't take the smell of the AC unit

At Infinity Air LLC, we know that the smallest hitch when it comes to your HVAC can make the wait for repair services feel like it lasts days. When you use our AC installation services in Las Vegas, we do the job right. More than technical skills, which we have plenty of, we’re sure to engage our customers and ask the right questions about what their use will be like.

Instead of recommending the best product on the market, we’ll recommend the best for you and your space. Our residential and commercial HVAC contractors have never met a space they couldn’t cool! Call us at 702-489-6452 to find out if you’re missing anything about AC repair services.