Two versus The Aircon

So, there are actually two aircon units in this apartment. One died, and the other was working OK, so that the dead one wasn't drastically urgent, just annoying. 

But, over the week or so after the first one died, the second one became slowly less and less effective, until it really wasn't working either - just a little trickle of cold air at the vent, but not enough to cool a room. 

A strange thing about that aircon unit is that the genius who designed it decided that the filter/intake should go at the bottom, which is also where the condensation/water naturally drips out. So when I replaced the filter, hoping that would make it work better, the filter was immediately soaked by the water dripping down. 

Yesterday it occurred to me that if I just removed the filter, maybe that will let more air flow through. A filter soaked with water maybe doesn't let as much air through as a dry filter, right? And when I pulled out the filter - WOW! I realized why the thing had been slowly dying. The inside of the unit was a solid block of ice! 

The coils were completely iced over. No air could get through there! So, we turned it off, and  Nick got my hairdryer and shot hot air at the ice for a while, and it all started to thaw. When we went to bed there was still too much ice for the aircon to operate, but this morning it was clean and dry (it's hot here!) and we turned it on... It works! So, we fixed it ourselves! 

Good thing, because - bleh! - the other unit is NOT fixed yet.