Maintenance
5 Warning Signs Your AC Needs Service Before Summer
Almost every mid-July no-cooling call we run was preventable, and almost every one of them was announcing itself weeks earlier. These are the five signals our techs see most.
Weak airflow at the registers. Nine times out of ten this is a clogged filter or a dirty evaporator coil, both cheap. The tenth time it is a failing blower motor, and catching that in April costs a fraction of what an emergency swap costs in a heat wave.
A hard start or a hum before the fan spins. That is a capacitor losing capacitance. A capacitor is a $20 part and a fifteen-minute job. Run the system with a weak one long enough and it takes the compressor with it, which is a several-thousand-dollar failure.
Warm air on the supply side while the unit runs. Usually low refrigerant, which means there is a leak, because refrigerant is a sealed loop and is not consumed. Topping it off without finding the leak is how homeowners end up paying for the same repair three summers running.
Water around the indoor unit, or a musty smell when the system kicks on. Both point at a blocked condensate line. In a Seattle crawlspace or attic that overflow finds drywall fast.
And finally, a system that runs constantly on a mild day. That is a system working too hard for the load it is meeting, and it is telling you something is wrong before it fails outright. A $149 tune-up in April covers refrigerant pressure, capacitor health, coil cleaning and a condensate flush - the four items behind roughly 80% of the calls we run in July.
