HVAC in New Orleans has to wring water out of the air in a shotgun that was built to breathe through windows. If the parlor is cold and the closets are damp, the system is not done. If a window unit roars in one room and the hall mildews, say that. Start with the wet air, not with a brand.
Long narrow houses have nowhere honest to hide ducts. Window units and ductless heads cool a room and leave the next one wild. Central systems stuffed into low attics bake the air and overflow pans into plaster that looks like a roof leak. Slab ranches in Gentilly, Lakeview, and the East use closets and attics too, and the return is starved when bedroom doors swell shut in the humidity. Short cycling chills the glass and leaves the sofa damp. That is the ordinary complaint.
Coils slime over in this air. Filters pack with oak pollen. Drain lines clog and the pan becomes a fountain above a ceiling. Outdoor cabinets rust. A pad settles and the fan rubs. Under a raised house, ducts sweat and come apart, so the crawl is cool and the room is not. If the only cooling is a window unit, say how many rooms have nothing at all.
Check the outdoor fan, the ice on the line, and whether water is reaching the drain or the ceiling. Name the rooms that stay hot and the rooms that stay wet. A gallery-side room that gets sun and a rear bath that never dries are different failures. Storm water that drowned a floor unit or a low disconnect is a separate fact from a humid Tuesday with no rain. A silent compressor and a running indoor fan is one call. Both dead is another.
Call with the neighborhood and the form. Raised shotgun, camelback, or slab ranch. Attic handler, window units, or ductless heads. Say whether the complaint is heat, smell, noise, or air that will not dry, and whether a storm wet the equipment. Mention a ceiling stain under the handler apart from a roof stain. The city air is wet by default. The call is about the room where that fact became a problem. Call the number on this page.