Indicative market ranges across Delhi NCR — not XpertWorker prices. Each professional sets their own charge and quotes you free.
It is the third week of May in Delhi, the AC has been on since noon, and the room is still warm. You call a technician. He puts a gauge on the unit, shakes his head, and says the four words that cost this city crores every summer: "gas daalni padegi."
Sometimes he is right. Most of the time he is not. The single most common reason an AC stops cooling in Delhi is a dirty filter and a clogged coil — and that is a service, not a gas refill. Confusing the two is the difference between a ₹500–900 job and a ₹2,800–4,000 one, and it is a mistake that gets made in thousands of Delhi homes every May.
This guide walks the symptoms in the order a good technician would: what you can check yourself in five minutes for free, what the likely causes actually are, and what each real fix typically costs across Delhi NCR in 2026.
A note on these numbers. XpertWorker is a marketplace, not a service company. We do not set any professional's price and we never charge you a paisa. Every figure below is an indicative market range for what independent technicians in Delhi NCR generally charge — a guide to help you judge a quote, not a quote itself. The technician you choose sets their own price, quotes you free before starting, and you pay them directly.
In this guide
Before you call anyone, check these three things
All three are free, take about five minutes, and between them they explain a large share of the "AC not cooling" calls made in Delhi every summer. Do them before you let anybody open the unit.
- 1. Pull out the filter and look at it. Open the indoor unit's front flap, slide the mesh filters out and hold them up to the light. If you cannot see light through them, that is your problem — the air physically cannot get through. Rinse them under a tap, dry them fully, put them back, and run the AC for twenty minutes. A surprising number of "not cooling" ACs cool again at this point.
- 2. Go and look at the outdoor unit. Is the fan spinning? Is the compressor humming? If the outdoor unit is dead silent while the indoor unit blows air, you do not have a gas problem — you have an electrical one, and no amount of refrigerant will fix it. Also check that nothing is blocking it: a stack of cartons, a bedsheet, a wall built 6 inches away, or a bird's nest in the grille.
- 3. Check the set temperature and mode. Obvious, and it still catches people. If the remote is on Fan mode, or the thermostat is set to 26°C on a 45°C afternoon, the unit is doing exactly what you told it to. Set it to Cool, 24°C, fan on high, and give it half an hour with the doors shut.
If all three check out and the room still will not cool, then it is time to call someone — and now you can call them with information instead of with panic.
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Get free quotesSymptom, cause, and what you actually need
Match your symptom to the row. The third column is the one that matters — it is the difference between the job you need and the job you may be sold.
| What you are seeing | Most likely cause | What you actually need |
|---|---|---|
| Cools, but weakly. Airflow from the indoor unit feels thin | Dirty filter or clogged indoor coil | A service. Not gas. This is the commonest cause in Delhi by a wide margin |
| Runs all day, room never gets properly cold, outdoor unit running fine | Dirty outdoor coil, or genuinely low refrigerant | Clean the outdoor coil first. If it still will not cool, ask for a leak test — not a refill |
| Indoor unit blows air, outdoor fan is not spinning at all | Failed capacitor, or a dead fan motor | An electrical repair. A gas refill cannot fix this and should not be offered |
| Ice or frost on the copper pipe or the indoor coil | Frozen coil — from choked airflow or low gas | Switch it off for a few hours and let it thaw, then get the airflow checked. Running it frozen can kill the compressor |
| Water dripping inside the room | Blocked drain pipe (usually clogged with the same dust) | A service, usually a quick one |
| Cools at night, gives up in the afternoon | Dirty coils plus extreme ambient heat — the unit cannot shed heat fast enough | A service, ideally including the outdoor unit. See the Delhi section below |
| Inverter AC, display shows an error code, cuts out repeatedly | Often the PCB (control board), or a sensor | A diagnosis. Get the error code from the manual and get a second opinion before agreeing to a board |
| Trips the MCB when the AC starts | Electrical fault or an overloaded circuit | Stop. Get the wiring checked before you run it again |
The gas myth — and why it costs Delhi so much money
This is the most useful thing on this page, so it gets said plainly.
Refrigerant is not fuel. It is not consumed. An air conditioner is a sealed system. The gas goes round and round; it does not burn off, evaporate away, or get "used up" over a season the way petrol does. A three-year-old AC that has never been opened should still have every gram of gas it left the factory with.
Which leads to the sentence that should change how you handle the next quote you get: if your AC is low on gas, it has a leak. There is no other way for the gas to have gone.
So when a technician says the unit needs gas, there is exactly one question to ask: "Where is the leak?" A good technician will have pressure-tested the system, will be able to point to the joint, the flare nut, or the corroded section of coil, and will quote you for fixing it. A technician who cannot answer is either guessing or selling. Refilling a leaking system without repairing the leak is buying the same refill again next summer — and you will pay ₹2,800–4,000 for it again.
There is a second reason gas gets over-sold here: a choked coil produces exactly the same complaint as low gas. The room does not cool. The customer cannot tell the difference. The technician can, and it is worth roughly five times more to him if he does not. Insist on a look at the filters and the coils before anyone reaches for a gas cylinder.
The Delhi problem: at 45°C, a dusty AC simply cannot keep up
Here is the part the manufacturer blogs will never write, because it is about Delhi specifically.
An air conditioner does not create cold. It moves heat — out of your room, through the copper, and into the air outside via the outdoor unit. That transfer gets harder as the outdoor air gets hotter. At 45°C, with the outdoor coil caked in the fine grey dust that settles on everything in this city, the unit is trying to dump heat into air that is barely cooler than the coil itself. It runs continuously, the compressor never gets a rest, and the room stalls at 30°C.
The AC is not broken. It is simply out of margin. The same unit, cleaned, would have coped.
Two things follow from that, and both are Delhi-specific:
- Cleaning the outdoor unit matters as much as the indoor one here. Most "AC servicing" in practice means wiping the indoor filters. In Delhi the outdoor condenser is the one drowning in dust, and it is the one doing the hard work in a heatwave. A foam jet wash of the outdoor coil is often what gets the cooling back on the hottest days.
- Voltage sag is the other summer killer. When the whole colony's ACs are running at 3pm, the supply voltage can drop well below normal. A compressor asked to start on low voltage draws more current, struggles, and may trip out on thermal overload — so the fan runs, the compressor does not, and the room warms up. If your AC only misbehaves at peak-load hours and behaves at midnight, get the voltage checked before you get the gas checked. A stabiliser is usually cheaper than everything else on this page.
An undersized unit is the third version of the same story. A 1-ton split in a 200 sq ft west-facing room with an uninsulated roof will cool that room in October and lose to it in June. No repair fixes an undersizing problem — but a proper service will at least give the unit its full capacity back, which is often enough to close the gap.
What each fix typically costs in Delhi NCR
These are indicative 2026 market ranges — what independent technicians across Delhi NCR generally quote for each job. Read them in order: the fixes at the top are far more likely to be the one you need than the fixes at the bottom.
| Job | Typical market range | What it usually includes |
|---|---|---|
| Split AC service & cleaning (per unit) | ₹500–900 | Filters, coil, drain, cooling check — the answer most of the time |
| Split AC deep clean / jet wash | ₹900–1,500 | Pressure wash of the indoor coil. Worth it if it has not been done in 2–3 years |
| Foam jet + anti-rust (outdoor unit) | ₹700–1,200 | The Delhi one. Cleans the condenser that is actually struggling in a heatwave |
| Gas refill — R22 (older split ACs) | ₹2,200–3,500 | Only after a leak has been found and repaired |
| Gas refill — R32 (modern split ACs) | ₹2,800–4,000 | What most Delhi homes bought in the last few years run on |
| Gas refill — R410A (inverter ACs) | ₹3,000–4,500 | Inverter units — the priciest gas to refill |
| PCB repair (inverter AC) | ₹2,000–4,500 | Part cost dominates. Ask for the old board back |
| Compressor replacement — 1.5 ton | ₹6,000–16,000 | The big one. Always get a second opinion before agreeing |
Indicative Delhi NCR market ranges, 2026. Each professional sets their own charge and quotes you free before starting. Parts are normally billed on top of labour.
How not to overpay on an AC that will not cool
- Ask for the diagnosis before the quote, and the quote before the work. "What is wrong, and how do you know?" is a fair question and a competent technician enjoys answering it.
- Never accept a gas refill without a leak answer. This one habit will save you more money than everything else on this page combined.
- Get a second opinion on anything above ₹5,000. Compressor and PCB quotes vary enormously, and the first number is not always the fair one.
- Ask what is labour and what is parts. They are separate lines and should be quoted separately.
- Keep the old part. Ask for any replaced component back. It is a reasonable request and it keeps everyone honest.
- Do not pre-pay, and do not pay for a package. Pay the technician directly, after the work, once you can feel that the room is cold.
- Book the service in February or March. The cheapest way to fix an AC that is not cooling in May is to have serviced it in February, when technicians are free and unhurried.
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