Air Conditioning Services in Austin & San Antonio

Ten to fifteen years is a fair expectation for a central air conditioner in Austin or San Antonio, and the difference between the two ends of that range is mostly maintenance. A system that gets its coils cleaned, its refrigerant charge verified and its capacitor tested every spring tends to reach the far end. One that runs on a clogged filter with a coil full of cedar pollen works harder every hour and burns out its compressor early. Our summers simply put more run hours on a unit each year than most of the country sees, so a 12-year-old system here has done the work of a much older one elsewhere.

It is a calculation, not a sales pitch, and we will do it with you. The inputs are the age of the equipment, what you have already spent on it, the cost of this repair, and what the next likely failure is. A $300 capacitor on a seven-year-old system is an easy repair. A compressor on a 14-year-old unit that still uses an older refrigerant is usually money better put toward a new system, especially with financing available. Whatever we recommend, it goes in writing with the numbers next to it, and the quote is good for 72 hours so you are never deciding under pressure on a hot afternoon.

The right size comes from a load calculation on your actual house: square footage, ceiling heights, window area and orientation, insulation levels, duct condition and how many people live there. It does not come from copying the tonnage on the old unit, which may have been wrong to begin with. Oversized systems are a common problem in Central Texas. They cool the air fast, shut off before they pull the humidity out, and leave the house clammy while short-cycling the compressor to an early death. An undersized system runs all day and never catches up on a 105-degree afternoon. We size every new installation from the load, and we will show you the math.

On the hottest afternoons of the year, a healthy system may run nearly nonstop and only hold the house within 15 to 20 degrees of the outdoor temperature. That is the equipment doing what it was sized to do. If it is 95 outside and the house is creeping past 80, something is wrong. The common causes we find are a dirty outdoor coil, a low refrigerant charge from a slow leak, a frozen evaporator coil from restricted airflow, a weak compressor, or duct leaks dumping cold air into the attic. Each has a different fix and a different price, which is why we diagnose the system instead of guessing from the symptom.