AC Repair: Tips And Tricks To Know | Lewisville, TX
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We at One Hour Air Conditioning & Heating of Dallas know how hot and humid it can get in Lewisville, TX, and you and your family’s safety are our biggest concerns. Once your air conditioner has broken down it is only a matter of time before life inside your home starts to get unpleasant. It will not be long before the indoor temperature starts climbing and you need a reliable AC repair company to fix your air conditioner quickly.
How to Avoid an Expensive AC Repair
Have your air conditioner regularly serviced! This is the advice we at One Hour give all our customers. A service represents good value when you consider that an AC repair and call-out charge in Lewisville, TX can set you back many hundreds of dollars. The summer is the busiest time for any AC repair technician.
We recommend that you book your service before the summer season starts. This will ensure that your unit is working efficiently giving you extra peace of mind before you start having to use it almost around the clock. The service will also save you money as your air conditioner will be using less energy in keeping you cool.
What Could Go Wrong with an Air Conditioner
As you would expect we use our air conditioners the most during the summer and this is the time they are most likely to need an AC repair. But even with a service, they can break down, so it is important to be on the lookout for any sign of trouble and these can include:
- Short-Cycling
- Your Air Conditioner Is Getting Old
- Increased Energy Bills
- The Evaporator Coils Are Frosting Over
- Reduced Cooling Effect
- Increased Humidity Levels
A service will take care of most of these issues but ignoring them will increase the risk that you will need an AC repair.
Short Cycling
A typical air conditioner completes three full cycles in an hour. For the first ten minutes, the compressor works to complete a full cooling cycle and then switches off for another ten minutes. If the compressor turns off too soon then you have a short-cycling problem and will not be receiving the full cooling effect from your unit.
Dirty air filters, frozen evaporator coils, and low coolant levels are often causes of short cycling and can be dealt with during a regular service. Ignoring these issues will only lead to an expensive AC repair. Another cause of short cycling is having an oversized air conditioner. This is because the cooling effect will be so rapid that the cool air will not be delivered evenly in your home.
Your Air Conditioner Is Getting Old
Let’s face it, as your air conditioner gets older, it increasingly starts to go wrong, and it will need more AC repairs. Even a well-serviced air conditioner has a useful life of between 10-15 years, as it gets older it will be less efficient and more costly to run. As it uses more energy it will increase your carbon footprint. Another environmental concern will be if you are still using Freon (R22) as a coolant. Freon is no longer manufactured in the USA and will become difficult and expensive to find.
There will come a point where it may be cheaper in the long term to replace your unit than to keep repairing it. A new model is more energy-efficient, requires less maintenance, and will be cheaper to run, offsetting the initial expense of a new install. As we have seen, having an oversized unit is a bad idea. So, it is vital to select a model that is correctly sized to best suit your needs and budget. We at One Hour Air Conditioning & Heating of Dallas can help you with that choice.
Increased Energy Bills
An older air conditioner will be less efficient and so your energy bills will be larger. Your energy bills will be naturally higher during the summer as you will be using your unit more. But if they go up by more than you have expected, this could point to problems within your unit.
A problem with one component will impact the others. For example, when the evaporator coils start to freeze over the other components such as the compressor will work harder to compensate. In trying to maintain the temperature that you have selected the harder working components will use more energy, increasing your bills. These components are more likely to overheat and need an AC repair.
The Evaporator Coils Are Frosting Over
Another bad sign to keep an eye open for is the appearance of frost and ice on the evaporator coils. The warm air in your home is extracted by a fan and then blown over the coils. The coolant within the coils will absorb the heat from the warm air and the cooler air is blown back into your home.
Unless enough warm air is blown over the coils, frost and ice could start to form on them. Not having enough coolant in the coils is another cause of the frost and ice forming. To make matters worse the layer of frost and ice will act as an insulating layer further reducing the rate at which heat is removed from your home or office.
Ignoring this problem will mean that evaporator coils will completely freeze. At this point, you will need to turn the air conditioner off to allow the coils to thaw, and this could take up to a very warm 24 hours.
Reduced Cooling Effect
All the factors mentioned above will reduce the cooling effect from your air conditioner, but a regular service from One Hour Air Conditioning & Heating of Dallas will restore things to normal at an affordable price by an expert technician.
Increased Humidity Levels
A lower cooling effect will mean the air blown back into your home will be warmer, and as warm air contains more moisture than colder air, your home will feel more humid. A key sign of this problem is droplets of water on the inside of your windows.
A Trusted Air Conditioning Company
One Hour Air Conditioning & Heating of Dallas has been serving the people of Lewisville, TX since 1988. We realize how important it is to offer a speedy AC repair service during hot Texas summers and that is why we have technicians available 24/7 waiting for your call! We are happy to help you at an affordable price and we always stand by our work!
