Regular Maintenance Extends the Life of Your Air Conditioner
Creating an HVAC maintenance plan can easily prevent issues and save you a great deal of money and misery.
If you’ve ever suffered through a week or two of chilly winter weather without heat, then you can definitely identify with the importance of keeping an HVAC system in prime condition all year long. HVAC systems are situated away from main rooms, usually in basements or back closets, which places them at risk of being forgotten until a serious problem arises.
Do Routine Maintenance Yourself
Major problems with your HVAC system should always be handled by a professional, but there are simple measures you can take to minimize the chances that a problem will even occur. First of all, make it a priority to change the filters on a regular basis. Dirty filters cause additional wear and tear, premature failure, and forces the use of more energy to do the same amount of work.
- A clean filter dramatically improves indoor air quality. In the depths of winter and height of summer, when the system is getting it’s hardest use, changing your filter once a month is best.
- Try setting your thermostat at more moderate temperatures. Keeping it set higher in the summer and lower in the winter means that your HVAC doesn’t have to work so hard to maintain your desired temperature, thus preventing avoidable wear and tear.
- Make a seasonal to-do list that includes inspecting electrical connections and testing your HVAC system’s voltage, lubricating all moving parts, and inspecting the condensate drain.
When to Call the Experts
If your HVAC is having problems, you can’t handle, don’t wait to call a heating and air conditioning specialist. The longer the problem is left ignored, the worse it is likely to get. Whether it’s a leak, blown fuse, or worn contactor, all issues can be resolved by an HVAC expert so that one problem doesn’t lead to six others that drain your bank account.
Both these Trane Air Conditioners have damaged compressors. Both units where shorted to ground and one of the two units was even completely dry of refrigerant.
Dead Trane R-22 Air Conditioners
Fortunately for my customer you can still purchase R22 air conditioners, but the units must come dry with no refrigerant in them, otherwise they would have had to either just replace the compressors or completely replace both the indoor and outdoor equipment with R410a equipment. This would have been a very costly way to go for my customer.
New American Standard dry R22 AC Units
The new American Standard R22 units above came with no refrigerant but charged with nitrogen instead. We simply had to recover the refrigerant out of one of the existing units, set the new units, braze in, and then pressure test the entire system with nitrogen. Once the test was over we pumped down both systems below 500 microns then charged with R22. We did add filter driers as well as sight glasses to complete the project.
New R22 American Standard AC Units On Roof
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
Arbys in Oak Harbor had 2 out of their 3 packaged air conditioners go down, both units suffered similar failures that where very costly to repair. Arbys elected to replace both units with 2 brand new Lennox Gas Packs.
Existing Trane Gas Packs
The Trane gas packs served the front counter and the dining area. Unfortunately these units went down right before winter.
New Curb Adaptors
Because the new units will not fit on the existing curbs some special curb adapters(above) had to be fabricated. There are actual companies that specialize in making these adaptors for different types of HVAC equipment.
Old equipment being removed.
With a little help from Mount Vernon Towing we had the old Trane units removed from the roof and the new Lennox units put on.
Existing Curbs
Here you can see the existing curbs that the new curb adaptors fit on to. The only draw back from using curb adaptors is it actually raises the units up about 22″. The other method is to remove the existing curb and installing a new one.
New Lennox gas packs
The new units sat right on to the new curb adaptors. We reconnected up to the existing gas pipe and installed the new economizers and smoke detectors. Arbys again has heat and air conditioning.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.