I should never have attempted to repair our central cooling system on our own. I was hoping to save money on the cost of a professional repair. The last time I hired a licensed Heating and A/C company for service, I paid attention. It didn’t seem care about he did anything all that difficult. The worker basically took the cottage off, cleaned all of the components and put it back together. It took him less than twenty minutes and he charged me many hundred dollars. I own a fantastic set of tools, and I’m fairly handy. I started by reading through the owner’s manual for the A/C. The area on troubleshooting was particularly informative. It convinced me that the problem with the cooling system was simply a buildup of dust inside the system. I then watched a series of helpful videos on Youtube. Since a lot of homeowners tackle A/C repair on their own, I felt quite confident. Taking the cottage off to access the inner now workings of the cooling system was no problem. However, once I got a look inside, I was a bit shocked. There was way more than a little bit of dust accumulated on the equipment. There was a ton of mold thriving inside. There was also an abundance of red slime clogging the condensate drain. The fan blades were totally coated in a combination of lint, hair, dust and mildew. It was no wonder our A/C wasn’t operating respectfully. I’m sure our air quality was getting badly polluted every time the cooling system started up. I was so disgusted by what I found, I got a little too aggressive with the cleaning. I ended up bending fan blades, splitting belts, losing screws and causing a leak in the condensate drain.