Signs You Are Ready for an AC Replacement

How to Determine You Are Ready for an AC Replacement

What makes your house an inviting place to come home to each day? Obviously, family members who mean the most to us are a good beginning, along with the belongings you have accumulated over the years. The location, layout, and finishes of your home seem so familiar, and, oh yeah, the building systems that make your home comfortable, including your air conditioner.

Your air conditioner is a big part of what makes your home healthy, safe, and comfortable. It heats or cools the air on demand and removes pollutants and humidity from the home with every cooling cycle.

If your air conditioner is very important, it desires maintenance and care from time to time.

While air conditioner systems are made from durable, well-made equipment, they do not function forever, especially without maintenance and care.

The average air conditioning system will last for 15 to 20 years or so, about 5 years longer, with excellent care. These systems require:

• Frequent air filter changes. The air filter collects airborne particles, cleaning the air. However, the filter will eventually clog, reducing airflow and system function.
• Annual condenser unit cleaning. The outdoor condenser is a network of tubes and fins designed to transfer heat quickly. A very large fan in the center of the unit pulls tremendous amounts of air through the network to disperse the heat. It also draws in dust, sticky pollen, and lawn clippings, which clog the network, just like the air filter gets clogged.
• Annual evaporator coil cleaning. A similar tubing network is located in the central air conditioning cabinet. This coil is wet during the cooling season; whenever airborne particles come into contact with these wet coils, they stick. This needs to be cleaned away.
• Refrigerant gas levels. An essential to modern air conditioning function is a refrigerant gas, commonly called Freon. This gas moves inside a closed loop under varying amounts of pressure. Should this gas escape through a leak, the air conditioning function declines and then ceases. This is a very important maintenance repair.
• Electronic controls. Finally, the whole system is controlled by various sensors and switches. In this network, when a small part weakens or fails it hampers the function of other parts. Catching small problems early is key to efficient performance.

Regular maintenance goes a long way towards keeping your air conditioning system functioning for as long as possible. When problems do arise, they are often noticed by the maintenance technician and repaired quickly, and an assessment can be done to determine if you are ready for an AC replacement.

But even with durable, well-made components, this essential mechanical system will fail and cease to function. Things to watch to determine if you are ready for an AC Replacement include:

• Frequent repairs. That includes the frequent replacement of the same part.
• Leaking Freon. Make sure to find and repair the leak the first time since certain types of refrigerant are scarce and expensive.
• Cooling begins to cost more. Your system will try to do what it is asked to do, even when parts are failing. However, this causes the system to use more energy than normal, and it becomes very energy inefficient.
• Component Failure. Large components, such as the compressor motor, fail.

Eventually, an accumulation of repairs or the need to replace a major component will approach the cost of replacing the system. At this point, spending money to repair an old, failing system will not make economic sense.

It is time to adjust the family budget and make plans for replacement before the air conditioner reaches the end of its useful life.

Need help determining if you are ready for an AC replacement? We Can Help! 

Let Doctor Cool help with your AC replacement questions. Call Doctor Cool & Professor Heat today at 281-338-8751 or email Doctor Cool.