If your air conditioner has had a problem here or there over the summer, you may be tempted to ignore it. After all, your air conditioner is still operating. Nothing major seems to be wrong. However, after your air conditioner sits unused over the fall and winter seasons, problems could be much worse when you go to turn your unit back on in the spring.
We encourage you to go ahead and schedule air conditioning repair in Williston, VT now ahead of turning your air conditioner off for the fall and winter months. You can keep reading to learn more about some of the late season AC repairs that we see and why it’s important to have them addressed now instead of putting off maintenance until next year.
Less Cool Air
Your air conditioner can lose its capacity to cool so slowly over time that you don’t notice it at first. By the time you realize your air conditioner is not cooling your home as much as it once did, the problem can already be pretty far along.
Since we’re at the end of the summer season you may be tempted to just turn off your AC and worry about the problem next year. Instead we encourage you to take a more proactive approach and address the issue now so that you can have peace of mind through fall and winter that it is taken care of.
Change to Cooling Cycles
You also want to pay attention to how your air conditioner is operating during a cooling cycle. Sometimes your air conditioner is still putting out cold air while operating inefficiently. For example, your air conditioner may turn on and stay on instead of operating in regular cooling cycles. Alternately, it may turn on and off every few minutes without ever staying on long enough to complete a cooling cycle all the way through.
In both scenarios, your home is still being cooled but your air conditioner is taking on a lot of additional strain in the process. Eventually this strain will lead to an air conditioner breakdown since the unit is not built to turn on and off frequently or stay on for extended periods of time.
Expensive Energy Bills
It can be easy to write off more expensive energy bills by thinking that your usage has increased or the energy costs are just going up. However, we encourage you to compare your energy usage to previous months and think about the settings you used on your thermostat.
If you did not make drastic changes to your thermostat settings, there’s a good chance that your air conditioner is losing efficiency for one reason or another. A tune-up can help you improve efficiency in your air conditioner, so that your energy costs will be lower for next spring and summer.
Leaks
Before you turn your air conditioner off for the fall and winter seasons, we encourage you to take a few minutes to inspect around the unit for leaks. Your condensate drain line may be clogged and leaking water, or your refrigerant lines may be damaged and leaking refrigerant. No matter what type of leak you have, it’s important to have your air conditioner repaired now instead of allowing the leaks to continue throughout the fall and winter.
Condensate drain clogs may get worse and could be more difficult to address in the springtime. And if refrigerant lines continue to leak, the chemical may damage the surrounding areas of your air conditioner and home, not to mention the health risks that your family faces from potentially breathing in the refrigerant.
Red Rock Mechanical, LLC serves Northwest Vermont and Northeast New York. Schedule AC service with us today.
