After multiple complaints to landlord and visits from repairmen, my AC cools ~1-4 degrees before maxing out. What do I do?

I need a little professional advice. Let me start by saying that my landlord is not a scumbag, but I do feel that his responses are becoming unreasonable. Each time I've submitted a work order, he's had people come and do the work. BUT the problem still isn't solved and he just keeps having them do the same work over and over.

So, I live on the top floor of an apartment building. I've always lived on the top floor wherever I've been and I've never had this problem, which is (to me) unreasonable. This summer my apartment has been upwards of 90 degrees--even throughout the night. I've tried really hard to just grit my teeth and put up with it, but every night I'm having trouble sleeping and every morning when I go into work I look like a terrible, sweaty mess.

It started a few months ago when the weather turned hot. My AC just wasn't cooling the place, so I called my landlord's office they sent someone out. He did his thing, but it didn't seem to make much difference. Figuring this was as good as it was going to get, I turned the AC down to 74 and let it run. And run. And run. In fact it ran nonstop just to keep my apartment between 76 and 85 depending on the time of day and heat index. It literally never stopped running as far as I know.

Then the $250 electric bill came. I was shocked (maybe I shouldn't have been), because in previous apartments I had always lived on the top floor and always kept my place at 70 degrees and never paid more than $120 a month to do so (granted, that's neither here nor there). I decided I would turn off the AC except for 8 hours at night for a month to see what my electric bill would look like (that bill still hasn't come yet. It's only been about 3 weeks).

Exactly 7 days ago I noticed my fan (I have forced air) was running even though the AC was turned off and the fan was on auto (the fan should not run unless the AC is running). I called the landlord's office again and they sent a maintenance guy out, who then had to send an HVAC guy out. Supposedly the HVAC guy fixed the fan issue (there were wires in the AC unit that had literally melted together) and worked on the AC as well. He said the air blowing out of the AC was 10 degrees colder than the ambient air and that should be fine (I don't know if that's true or not, but it doesn't feel fine). He also commented that the AC was on it's last legs and he had to install a "kickbox" just to make it turn on. I ran the AC for about 4 hours after he left and it cooled my apartment by 1 degree. That's not an exaggeration.

Well, I came home from 3 days of vacation today to find that the fan was running again for no reason and it was 90 degrees in my apartment. I took a picture of the thermostat readout just in case. At this point I have a few concerns. From dealing with my landlord's office and the things they've said to me, like, "Well, you're on the top floor. What do you expect?" I get the feeling that they're not going to do any more to resolve this issue than repeating the same steps they've already taken. I've reached the point where that's not acceptable and I'd like to know what I should do next.

I'm really tempted to hire a someone privately to come inspect the place, then take their recommendations to my landlord. I don't know if that will actually pay off or not, but at least it would tell me a few things. What do you guys think? If I do that, how much should I expect to pay and what specifically should I ask them to look at or test? How comprehensive should I expect the testing to be? What do I do if the findings are significant but my landlord refuses to acknowledge them?

submitted by /u/planex09
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