RV air conditioner not cooling: what is wrong and what the repair costs

An RV air conditioner that runs but does not cool is, in this market, the most urgent call we take from June through September. It is also one where the price range is enormous: $200 to $600 for the common repairs against $1,200 to $2,500 for a replacement unit. Getting the diagnosis right is worth real money, and a surprising share of “dead” rooftop units come back to life for the price of a capacitor or a coil cleaning.

Check this first (fifteen minutes)

1. Measure the split. Put a thermometer at the return air grille and another at a supply register. A healthy unit gives you roughly a 16 to 22 degree drop. If you have that split on a 92-degree afternoon with a dew point in the 70s, the AC is working and the problem is heat and moisture load, not the unit.
2. Check the power source. On a 30-amp pedestal with a water heater, a converter, and a residential fridge running, an AC can be starved. Low voltage at the pedestal on a hot afternoon when everyone in the park is running AC makes compressors struggle and start capacitors fail. Also check for a tripped GFCI or pedestal breaker after a storm.
3. Look at the filters and the return. RV AC filters are small, and in this humidity they clog with growth as well as dust. Pull them and look. A filter that smells musty is telling you what the coil behind it looks like.
4. Look for ice. Ice on the evaporator coil inside the interior assembly means airflow or a thermostat problem, not a refrigerant problem. Shut it off, run the fan only until it thaws, and see whether it cools normally afterward.
5. Look for water inside. Drips from the ceiling assembly on a humid day with no rain are condensate that is not draining: a blocked drain path or a pan that has cracked. That is an AC service item, not a roof leak.
6. Go up top if you safely can and look at the condenser coil. Ours collect pollen, oak debris, and a film of mildew. A fouled condenser cannot reject heat, and on a 90-degree afternoon that is the difference between cooling and not.

What is usually wrong

These match the pricing page on top of the $75 to $150 trip fee and $125 to $190 hourly labor.

The Florida reality about RV air conditioning

A rooftop RV air conditioner is a small appliance asked to do two jobs here, not one. It has to pull heat out of a thin-walled box in the sun, and it has to pull water out of air that carries a dew point in the high 60s or low 70s every day from May into November. The second job is where Florida units struggle. Every gallon of water the coil wrings out of the air has to drain away, and the coil itself stays wet around the clock for months. Wet, dark, and warm is a growth medium, and that is why the musty-smell call is as common here as the capacitor call.

What the honest version of that conversation includes:

• Judge by split, not by setpoint. A unit making a 20-degree drop is doing its job. If the coach is still 82 degrees and sticky, the unit is not the problem.
• Clean the evaporator and the ducts, not just the filter. A coil coated in growth cannot transfer heat. This is the single highest-return AC service in this climate.
• Keep the condensate moving. Blocked drain paths back water up into the ceiling assembly and into the insulation.
• Shade is worth more than BTUs. A rig under oaks or on the shaded side of a building is a different thermal problem from the same rig on an open pad.
• Pedestal voltage matters. A park circuit sagging on a hot afternoon is hard on a compressor and it is a real cause of premature failures in older parks.

Why so many ACs die in summer storms here

Two mechanisms. Growth on the coils builds over a couple of seasons until the unit can no longer move heat, at which point the compressor runs hot and does not last. And lightning: Florida led the country in 2025 with 305 lightning events per square mile, and the Tampa-to-Orlando corridor is the heart of it. A strike on the park’s line puts a surge through every pedestal on it, and rooftop AC control boards are among the first things to go. A surge protector at the pedestal is the cheapest AC insurance available, and we would rather you buy one than a board.

If you are living in the rig

Say so when you call. A full-timer or a summer resident with no cooling in July is a different priority from a stored rig, and we schedule it that way. If the unit cannot be repaired the same day, we will tell you honestly what the lead time on a replacement unit looks like rather than leaving you guessing in the heat.

What to expect on the call

Tell us the make and BTU rating if you can read it off the shroud or the interior assembly, what the split is, whether the compressor is starting, whether there was a storm before it quit, and what the pedestal is giving you. We work on site across Zephyrhills, Dade City, Wesley Chapel, Lutz, and Plant City, and the Dometic and Coleman AC page covers what fails first on each.