Keeping your air conditioner running in top condition is crucial to the comfort of your home, especially if you live anywhere in Arizona. To ensure your air conditioner is always in good condition, AC maintenance must be done regularly. If you’re not so sure about that, well, we listed reasons that will definitely change your mind.
AC Maintenance Prevents AC Failure Surprises
Don’t want surprises? Well, an AC failure is a surprise you wouldn’t like, especially during the hot summer months. AC maintenance prevents such from happening.
You don’t want to leave things up to luck and hope and pray that all is well with your air conditioner. Instead, you want to do pre-season AC maintenance and try to identify anything that is wrong with the unit or could potentially go wrong.
A big surprise mid-cooling season means the inconvenience of having an extremely hothouse. By “inconvenience,” we meant to say “horrific experience.” If you live in Arizona and you’ve ever had your AC completely out after coming home from work one evening, then you know exactly what we mean.
The Arizona weather is not friendly to anyone in the summertime. It can be downright brutal. So it’s best to have an HVAC technician clean, tune-up, and maintain your unit. Neglecting to do so is like gambling with your comfort. If you want to gamble, go to a Las Vegas casino instead. The problem with that is you know the old saying, “The house always wins.”
AC Maintenance Lessens Unplanned Repair Expenses
AC preventive maintenance helps prevent unplanned expenses. If you know ahead of time that your AC unit has a problem, then you can actively plan to get it repaired or maintained. I like surprises as much as the next guy, but when it comes to AC units breaking down, that is definitely not a surprise anybody wants.
AC repairs in Arizona can set you back anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand. When your AC is down, you have no choice but to get it fixed, unless you’re willing to pay for the consequences.
Preventive maintenance helps those unwanted expenses, so be proactive and start scheduling your air conditioner’s next maintenance.
AC Maintenance Extends the Life Expectancy of Your Air Conditioner
The life expectancy of your AC unit really stems from two main factors.
The first factor is the quality of the installation performed by the installing AC contractor. The second factor is how well the AC unit has been maintained throughout its life.
If you’re reading this article, chances are you probably already have an AC unit at home so you can’t do anything about the first factor anymore. You can’t uninstall your AC, but you can do something about the second factor.
You see, AC maintenance is extremely important that it will at least double the life of your unit, probably more if done correctly and routinely. Unfortunately, we tend to have the problem of “out of sight, out of mind,” and we forget that there are mechanical pieces of equipment keeping our homes comfortable 24/7. We don’t really think twice about it until there’s a problem.
Having a problem with your AC unit and bearing the cost to fix it is a big problem, but at the same time, it also shortens the life expectancy of your equipment and that is far more costly than the actual repair itself. We all know air conditioners are not cheap. The longer we can make them last, the better off we are.
AC Maintenance Lowers Utility Bills
Without AC maintenance, your air conditioner will cost you more money. Electric bills during the summertime in metropolitan Phoenix range, on average, $400 t0 $500, even $600.
As an HVAC contractor, We talk to homeowners all the time about their electric bills. We’ve seen bills as high as $1,300 a month. That’s why they call us out to do AC maintenance. Is AC maintenance a magic bullet? The answer is no, but there is definitely a correlation between AC maintenance on your unit and the cost of your utility bill.
A basic maintenance can run you $60 or $80. Heck, even if you find an expensive one for $100, it’s still more than pays for itself. Look at it like this: you’re going to spend the money either way. You’re going to either spend it on electricity or on AC maintenance.
The smart money is on AC maintenance. If you see AC maintenance from an investment point of view, you will have AC maintenance done on your equipment every single cooling season. It’s one investment that will never lose value.
AC Maintenance Brings More Comfort to Your Home
When we talk about comfort, we’re really just talking about feeling good or not. Well, to feel good in your home, the AC unit is designed to the specifications and size of your home and must be in proper working order.
If your AC unit is not maintained properly, this will cause either too long of a run cycle or too short of a run cycle. The run cycle is the time your thermostat tells your AC unit to come until the time it tells the unit to shut off. When the unit is running at the proper amount of time (correct run cycle time), it is working to cool your home but the thing that actually makes you comfortable is the removal of the humidity. This can only be achieved by having a clean indoor coil that allows proper airflow and heat transfer .
AC Maintenance Improves Air Quality in Your Home
Who wants quality air in their home? Everyone does, it goes without saying. This cannot be accomplished without proper and regular AC maintenance. Here’s why
The air flowing throughout your home gets cooled by passing through the part of the air conditioner called the air handler, which contains the indoor coil a.k.a. the evaporator coil. This is the part of your system that requires the most maintenance; this is where the air goes after it passes the filter.
The indoor coil is somewhere homeowners never see and for good reason. They are usually located in an inaccessible location tucked away in a basement or attic. They are dark, wet, and serve as a collection point for bacteria and germs. These coils MUST be maintained by a professional. This area should be cleaned and sanitized on a regular basis. This aspect of AC maintenance directly affects the quality of the air you breathe.
These are just a few of the reasons why AC maintenance is important. After reading everything above, you should now clearly understand what the benefits of AC maintenance are.
To recap, AC maintenance saves you from unexpected breakdowns, unplanned repair expenses, a shortened unit life expectancy, unnecessary utility bills, having high humidity (uncomfortable feeling) in your home, and last but not least, breathing unclean or unsafe air.
AC maintenance is like many things in life: the more you put into it, the more you will get out of it.
Contact your local air conditioning maintenance company to schedule your routine maintenance today. You’ll be glad you did.