Why was my air conditioner on?

Question

Our central air conditioner hasn't been working for a long time now. So we had someone come by because he had a friend who worked on air conditioners. Well, he took some piece with him and unplugged the air conditioner. Now for some reason, even though its unplugged, it was just running. My mom switched the fan from 'on' to 'auto', and it clicked off. We would just call him but it's to late. Any ideas? By the way, the reason we had it off the first place was because it wasn't shooting out any cold air.

Answer 1

The reason it's on is because it is set on auto, which responds to an internal thermostat. The internal thermostat is trying to reach a temperature that was previously set. What she unplugged was obviously not the unit but something nearby, because a/c's don't run on imagination.

Answer 2

There are two electrical circuits involved in central air.  One (the biggy) drives the condenser (or compressor).  The other drives the fan of the air handler.  It sounds as though your air handler fan was left on when the friend of a friend looked at it.

Answer 3

  If it was in the on position, than it should run. In auto it shuts itself off when the thermostat tells it to.