Averting Costly HVAC Repairs With Regular Air Conditioning Service | Richardson, TX
Your HVAC system is among the most important components of your home. It is essential to ensure that your family is comfortable throughout the year. However, these systems require a routine air conditioning service to function efficiently and avoid issues that could be expensive to repair. If the HVAC system breaks down, repairing them can prove costly; sometimes, you have to replace a component or even the entire unit. Hence, besides ensuring your system is efficiently functioning, maintenance ensures that your system is indeed functioning. Remember, your air conditioning unit is installed in an environment with various factors and actors that might increase the rate of wear and tear. Maintenance helps manage those actors and prevents factors from impacting the working of your AC.
What Are the Most Expensive Heating and AC Repairs?
Without any doubt, replacing the malfunctioning compressor is, without a doubt, the most expensive HVAC repair. This component is the heart of your HVAC system and is responsible for pumping coolant through your system. When the compressor fails, it could be economically better to replace the entire system rather than just the compressor. This is because the component could cost you several thousand dollars to replace, not to forget the installation costs. Replacing an HVAC compressor is labor intensive, and coolants aren’t cheap. Hence, once you install one, you must have an air conditioning service provider give it a routine inspection and tune-ups.
Replacing or repairing a heat exchanger in your furnace is a costly undertaking. This is especially when it becomes cracked. Sometimes, fixing the heat exchanger cannot even be practical, especially when the cracking is too extensive. Remember, a cracked heat exchanger will also cause issues like carbon monoxide poisoning, high energy consumption, and soot from the incomplete combustion finding its way into your home.
Other costly heating and AC repairs include repairing refrigerant leaks, fixing faulty inducer motors, and replacing your unit’s condenser coils. Since these components are essential in keeping your HVAC system smoothly running, you should have an air conditioning service provider give them regular maintenance.
What Are the Least Expensive Heating and AC System Repair?
Not all HVAC problems are labor intensive or will cost you heavily to repair. Some of the issues are relatively small and can be easily fixed. You can even do these repair jobs yourself. Take replacing a clogged air filter, for instance. Depending on your HVAC system type, you can do this all by yourself. However, it is recommended that you leave even such minor issues to an AC repair professional. This is because, besides repairing your minor issues, they will inspect the unit, lubricate the mechanical parts, and clean the coils, among other air conditioning services, when they visit.
However, failure to address these relatively minor issues can result in expensive heating and AC repairs. For instance, failure to clean or change the filters will lower indoor air quality but could also result in system failure as your HVAC system will be straining to push the conditioned air through the clogged filter. This makes the unit use more energy and cycle more. As a result, there will be increased wear and tear, resulting in capacitor failure, compressor overheating, and blower motor failure, all of which are costly to address. As you can see, a regular air conditioning service and handling even those minor things are essential.
Other inexpensive repairs include:
- Replacing thermostat batteries.
- Fixing the failed condensate pump.
- Replacing a damaged contactor.
- Installing a new fuse after the present one gets blown.
The condensate pump is the component that pumps water from the heating and cooling system and into your plumbing while the contactors manage different circuits in your HVAC system. Remember, frequently blowing a fuse signifies a larger underlying issue.
Which Parts of Your HVAC System Are Likely to Require a Replacement?
The heating and cooling system comprises many parts working together to ensure your home is comfortable. However, these parts will start wearing out over time, impacting the performance of your system. Although some parts are resilient and could last years with a regular air conditioning service, others might require a replacement sooner.
Fuses, condensate pumps, capacitors, and air filters are some of the HVAC components that require more often replacement. However, these aren’t the only ones. It is worth noting that the replacement relies on what the component does. For instance, fans and motors are mechanical parts, and unless appropriately lubricated, they heat up from the friction, increasing their failure rate. The coils in your HVAC system are also sometimes exposed to debris and dirt that clog them, resulting in overheating. Fortunately, cleaning them is among the main tasks in the air conditioning service.
What Are the Factors That Affect the Cost of HVAC Repairs?
You will undoubtedly face issues requiring HVAC repairs without a regular air conditioning service. As explained above, some issues are costlier to repair than others. So, what factors impact the total cost of the heating and cooling system repairs? Many factors impact this, including:
Scope of the Work
You might have to pay more depending on the scope of tasks for which the air conditioning service is required. Does the service include only cleaning the ducts? Will the professional have to clean the entire HVAC, inspect the unit, and repair any damaged parts? Will the technician have to change the air filters and check the wiring in addition to all the above? The larger the scope of the work, the more the service will cost you.
For instance, servicing commercial heating and air conditioning units cost more than residential systems. You could ask yourself why the disparity in costs and these systems do the same job, therefore, the same. Unlike residential units, commercial HVAC systems are interlinked. Hence, any issue with one system could affect the others, resulting in discomfort in the entire building. The air conditioning service provider would need more experience working with commercial HVAC systems. Since the commercial units have a larger scope, it costs more to maintain them.
Age of Your HVAC System
Is your HVAC system over a decade old? Then it will likely encounter various technical issues frequently. As mentioned above, some of these issues might be minor, but when they occur frequently, you will have to keep using money to have an AC repair technician resolve them. They also might even cause other costly issues within the system. In old systems, some components are irreversibly damaged at this point, so the system cannot function efficiently, even with your regular air conditioning service.
Unfortunately, you may have to wait hard and long for the replacement parts to be sourced, and they won’t come cheap. This is particularly because of the ever-advancing and evolving technology. What was new several years ago when you installed your HVAC system may be obsolete today. In this case, any reasonable HVAC technician will recommend you replace the old unit with a new, technologically advanced, and energy-efficient one rather than remain stuck with repairing your existing system.
The Design of the System
The design and installation of an HVAC system in a building can also affect the price of the air conditioning service. For instance, if the unit is easy to access and self-contained, the professional will easily work on it, meaning it will cost you less. On the other hand, if your system is installed in spaces that are hard to access, it will cost you more. This is because the air conditioning service provider will spend more effort and time accessing the components tucked in the crawl space or hidden behind the walls. For instance, if the air ducts are long and have a lot of bends or kinks, it will take time before the technician cleans them. Thus, a duct cleaning service for such will cost you more.
The Season You Are Seeking HVAC System Maintenance
This factor largely relies on the economics of demand and supply. An HVAC system does both cooling and heating. Hence, the air conditioning service or repair cost depends on the season when your unit experiences technical issues. For instance, if you are seeking maintenance service just before the summer or winter season, it will cost you more. This is because, at this time, many other homeowners are also seeking the same service. Similarly, if you experience cooling issues in the summer, the repairs will likely cost you more than they could if you were looking for the same service during the winter. There is a high demand for AC repair technicians in the summer.
Hence, consider and ensure you give your cooling and heating system the required preventative servicing and necessary repairs. If you rely on your system mainly for cooling in summer, ensure its problems are inspected, diagnosed, and fixed by an air conditioning service provider during the winter. If you use your HVAC system for heating your home in the cold winters, have a technician service it and fix any underlying problems during the summer. This way, the maintenance costs will not skyrocket because of seasonal demand.
How Damaged Your HVAC System Is
Sometimes, your air conditioning unit might experience minor snags like clogged air filters and frozen evaporator coils. If you follow all the manufacturer’s instructions, you can solve these problems independently. However, this is not recommended as you need more skills or experience to complete the task. If an air conditioning service provider did this, they would also have inspected the unit for other underlying issues. Although you can resolve these minor issues, what if your air conditioning unit has a faulty compressor? DIY works on such tasks are highly prohibited.
As explained above, whenever an essential part of your HVAC system, such as the compressor, sustains damage, the associated repair costs typically skyrocket. It could even be that the compressor is so damaged that it cannot be repaired. In such circumstances, you should prepare for even higher installation costs, remembering that you will still incur the purchase and possibly transportation costs. To prevent such issues, it is recommended that you give your HVAC system a routine air conditioning service. With an HVAC company you’ve had a prior relationship with, they might give you repair and maintenance discounts.
Size of the HVAC System
Normally, air conditioning service costs are lower for small HVAC systems and higher for larger ones. This is because components used in the smaller heating and air conditioning systems tend to be more affordable than those large repair parts. Remember, larger systems have complex circuits and huge or extensive components. For instance, comparing a ductless mini-split AC with a central AC, it is evident that maintenance for the latter will cost you more.
This is primarily because the central AC unit has many components and extensive air ducts requiring maintenance. With smaller systems, even when the unit experiences major damage, the servicing or repair costs will be reasonably lower. However, ultimately the repair costs boil down to your maintenance habits. If you give your home’s unit tender, loving care, it will serve you longer, and you won’t incur expensive repairs or replacements.
How Often Should You Service Your HVAC System?
A routine air conditioning service ensures your HVAC system runs smoothly. But after how long should the unit be serviced? This depends on several factors too. However, you should have a yearly inspection if you have an HVAC, furnace, or AC. Those homeowners using heat pumps for cooling and heating should have the system inspected and serviced by a technician every six months. Since proper maintenance will catch the developing problems before they worsen, you can be sure you will save money on HVAC repairs.
Do you need HVAC maintenance? Contact us at One Hour Air Conditioning & Heating of Dallas today. You can never go wrong with our AC services.
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