Learning About HVAC Equipment

You probably already know that you need to keep your air conditioning system well maintained to ensure that it operates effectively and reliably all summer long. Of course, knowing you need to maintain your system isn't the same as understanding how poor maintenance can affect its performance. In many cases, deferring service work can seemingly have no immediate effect.

While ignoring maintenance tasks won't cause your air conditioner to fail immediately, it will increase the likelihood of problems and cause other potential issues. Understanding how poor maintenance leads to these problems may help you see why it's crucial to keep up with annual service and inspection visits from a qualified HVAC technician.

Why Does Air Conditioner Performance Degrade Over Time?

Most mechanical devices will degrade over time. As your air conditioner ages, you'll usually notice that it has more trouble keeping up with your cooling load, and you may also see an increase in your energy bills. Surprisingly, some relatively innocuous seeming culprits are usually to blame for these problems: dirt and dust.

Your air conditioner's primary job is to extract heat from your home and dump that excess heat into the outside environment. It transfers heat to the refrigerant via the evaporator coils indoors and then releases that heat through the outdoor condenser coils. These coils use numerous tiny fins to increase their surface area, ultimately allowing more efficient heat transfer.

As dust and debris build up on these coils, they reduce the efficiency of your system. A less efficient system doesn't just perform poorly, however. Less efficient heat transfer puts more strain on the compressor motor, causing this critical and costly part to wear out more quickly. In severe cases, refrigerant slugging can damage or destroy the compressor itself.

How Do Routine Service Visits Help?

The effects of poor maintenance can be subtle and hard to notice, at least at first. For example, you may not realize your system is working a little harder to cool your home. While a slow reduction in efficiency may be challenging to notice, leaving your air conditioning system in this condition can ultimately reduce its lifespan by causing it to work much harder.

Scheduling annual service visits is an excellent way to avoid these problems. Your air conditioning service technician will inspect and clean components such as your condenser and evaporator coils while also checking for correct operation. This more thorough inspection will often include testing the temperature differential between your return and supply ducts to ensure your AC system is cooling adequately.

Waiting to schedule a service visit until you notice an issue often means that your system has been running inefficiently (and working much too hard) for longer than you realize. Taking a preventative approach will ensure that your AC system operates efficiently and lasts for as long as possible.