family sitting in living room

Check-ups for your kids, any pets, and the car all have their purpose. You want to make sure everything is working as it should, and your preventative HVAC maintenance isn’t much different. Scheduling regular, preventative maintenance for HVAC equipment helps homeowners stay “in the know” on their system.

Before the seasons switch, make an appointment with your local HVAC company to make sure everything is okay with your cooling system. No one wants to wake up to a broken AC unit right when the weather starts heating up! Make sure your technician reviews the following on your system (and with you) for a job well done.

 

What’s Covered in Your Cooling Tune-Up?

Your annual maintenance process should always include a detailed review of the inside and outside components of your cooling system. It’s important to get an AC tune-up done once a year to prevent unnecessary issues. Scheduling your service during the cooling season can help you get the best benefits!

There are many different technical parts to review in your unit. Testing each of these areas takes a little time, but going through them one-by-one will help your technician identify any air conditioner problems that may occur. If you can isolate errors to a single step in your system’s process, it will be easier to keep repair costs down and extend the lifespan of your AC unit. Your cooling tune-up should always include tests for:

  1. Check operating pressures and temperatures
  2. Superheat measurements
  3. Temperature drop at return and supply air
  4. Contactor condition and operation
  5. Proper operation of controls
  6. Wiring and electrical connections
  7. Fan and inducer motor voltage and amperage
  8. Function of capacitors and relays

If all of those tests are completed in good working order, your tech would then move on and perform steps for ongoing maintenance. Because dirty units won’t be able to run properly, these items are very important for every tune-up. A few more details can help keep your system running at peak efficiency:

  1. Lubricate blower motor, condenser fan, and other moving parts (if needed)
  2. Clear the condensate drain for overflow protection
  3. Clean outdoor condenser unit for proper airflow

The final steps on the check-list relate to customer care. Your technician should always be ready to review your key concerns about your AC’s operation and be able to address the following for a full-service review:

  1. Check thermostat and adjust (if needed)
  2. Evaluate air filters, and clean or replace (if requested)
  3. Review equipment condition and answer any questions

If your HVAC technician can complete the following, you will probably be all set for annual maintenance. As the old adage goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of savings!”

 

HVAC Savings with Annual Maintenance

Scheduling annual maintenance is also smart for homeowners looking to save money. Some HVAC companies offer special discounts for their annual maintenance clients. At LCS Heating and Cooling, these HVAC discounts are included in with your LCS Gold Star Membership or LCS Platinum Star Membership. Each membership comes with a monthly payment option—and tons of great savings.

Available for both residential and commercial customers, these memberships work to give you maximum efficiency for your heating and cooling tune-ups at the minimum cost. Both Gold and Platinum Star Memberships offer 10% off repairs, 15% off indoor air quality products and services, and discounted after-hours rates. If anything does go wrong with your unit, it’s great to be a member.

Gold Star Membership automatically gives you $20 off service calls, and even waives the service call with a paid repair over $300 during regular business hours. Platinum Star Membership includes a year’s supply of filters, plus a waived service call for any paid repair during regular business hours. Platinum members also get to participate in our special loyalty program. The longer you stay on the maintenance plan, the more benefits you receive. You can even earn up to $700 towards a full system replacement!

 

Quality HVAC Service with LCS Heating and Cooling

Your HVAC preventative maintenance and other air quality upgrades help keep your home comfortable and energy-efficient. (And the savings aren’t bad, either!) If you’re ready to give your HVAC units the care they need for a great, long-term performance, give us a call at (317) 238-3961. We’d love to talk with you about our HVAC Membership benefits!

Being pro-active will help keep your systems operating smoothly for years to come. Don’t wait to face AC repairs later in the year. Preventative maintenance helps homeowners stay on the ball and plan for possible problems in advance. Contact the HVAC experts at LCS Heating and Cooling to tune-up your system and start saving today!

Is It Too Late for Air Conditioner Maintenance?

What a crazy summer it's been!  Mother Nature has given us a little bit of everything- cooler than average temperatures, rain, heat and humidity!  As we enter the last half of the summer, we are asked the question:  Is it too late to have preventative maintenance completed on my air conditioner?

The short answer is:  No!  It's definitely not too late.

Air conditioners run constantly so it's never too late to give them a good tune-up and cleaning.  Grass clippings, cottonwood, leaves and construction dust can all collect around and in the air conditioner.  If this happens, air will not flow through the air conditioner as it should.  This drops the efficiency of the air conditioner and causes pressures to change.

A tune-up not only checks the operation of different parts but also measures the temperatures and pressures too.  It may be seen that amp draws are a little off or pressures are a little low.  Finding these issues during a tune-up may very well prevent a service call and the inconvenience of being without air conditioning when it's hot out.  A repair may be made at the time of maintenance or the technician can inform you of a potential future repair.

Air conditioner maintenance also includes the drain clean out.  If debris gets into the drain, the drain may back up creating water to fill the drain pan.  Depending on the location of the furnace, you may find water around the furnace area or it will trip a switch causing the system to stop running so the water doesn't overflow.   Again, preventative maintenance can prevent this water problem.

As you can see, preventative maintenance is beneficial at any time that your system is running!

There are also a couple of things you can do on your own throughout the summer as well:

  • Keep grass, plants and weeds trimmed and away from the air conditioner.
  • Turn the air conditioner off at the thermostat and then use a hose to spray it out.
  • Check and change your filter regularly.

Keeping up on regular maintenance will keep your air conditioner running more efficiently than one that's not seen a tune-up in awhile!


Annual Maintenance: Why Not Just Do It All at Once?

Next to keeping a clean filter installed in your HVAC system, annual maintenance is the most cost-effective way to ensure that your furnace and air conditioner are running as efficiently as possible.  Our Energy Savings Plan is a preventative maintenance plan in which the air conditioner is cleaned and tuned in the spring or summer and the same is done on the furnace in the fall or winter.  Maintenance is much more than just spraying out the air conditioner or vacuuming the inside of the furnace.  All of the components, wiring, motors and refrigerant levels are checked during the tune-up.  Hopefully, everything will be in proper ranges.  If there is an issue, we can bring it to your attention and discuss any options so you can determine how you'd like to handle it.

While maintenance will not guarantee that parts won't go bad on the furnace or air conditioner, problems may be found before they cause issues.  For example, a motor may have higher than usual readings or a part may be making a louder than normal noise.  Catching these things before they actually go out will not only save you a service call fee but will also keep you from being without air conditioning on a hot day!

We are occasionally asked:  Why do you come out twice a year?  Why not just do the furnace and air conditioner maintenance all at once?  While it's important that the maintenance is completed at some point each year, it's preferred to complete the cleaning and tune-up just before or during the season that it'll actually be used.  That also means that we'll be checking the filter for you twice a year and completing maintenance on other items such as humidifiers just before they'll be used as well.  By seeing a technician twice a year, we can ensure that all of your questions or concerns are answered about your system so that it's running as well as it can all year long.

For more information, additional benefits and pricing on our Energy Savings Plan, please click here.