I thought
空调制冷得不太好
would be perfectly fine, using the grammar structure
Subj. + Verb + 得 + Complement
Chinese Grammar Wiki
But there's no hits on Baidu for "制冷得不太好" which is a strong indicator that something is wrong. I don't know what though.
Question: What's wrong with 空调制冷得不太好 meaning "The air conditioner cools poorly"?
It seems it's correct to say
空调制冷效果不太好
(See Baidu search for "空调制冷效果不太好".) That's fine and makes sense to me, but I don't understand why 空调制冷得不太好 is not also okay.
You’ve got the concepts down but the problem here is that 冷 is not a verb. So now you’ve got 得 modifying 冷 and not 制.
Often times with words like this you might see repetition of the actual verb like:
• 说话说得
• 跳舞跳得
• 写字写得
This way it’s the verb that’s being qualified.
This isn't a very common phrasing but here are some examples I found online:
"制冷" is not a verb. Note that your dictionary link that is showing calls it a noun (small "n."). It means "refrigeration", as in the power to refrigerate, not "to refrigerate" (v.). Hence it is invalid to insert it into the verb slot of the structure you are trying to use.
But, in fact, this actually leads the way to writing this sentence with proper grammar. Note that "不太好" is a degree word+adjective combination, giving 好ness in the degree 不太 (not so much), so you should instead just use the structure
N + degree + adj.
just as in, say, "He is tall" - 他很高。 Hence, what you'll want to do is delete the 得 and make 空调 into the possessive to create a noun phrase:
空调的制冷不太好。
lit. "The air conditioner's refrigerating power is not all that good". And sure enough, this rings up hits - though not many, so there's probably also a more idiomatic way of saying it, but at least it's correct.
ADD: Yes, even better, just remove "的"- in this case you don't need it, because the refrigerating power is intimately (and not incidentally) possessed by the air conditioner (c.f. speaking of parts of one's own body, or one's parents - same cognitive logic as 我妈妈 vs. 我的妈妈, etc.), hence
空调制冷不太好.
and this now gets a LOT of hits on Baidu.
The air conditioner isn't cooling very well.
空调冷却功能不太好。
airco. cooling function not very good
