Another long, hot, sweaty Frisco, Texas summer is coming, which begs the question:
What Causes My Air Conditioner to Break Down?
What did people do before there were air conditioners? How did they work in the heat, in the fields, all day and come home to un-air-conditioned homes? Luckily, we don’t have that problem.
Most of us have wonderful air conditioning to come home to near Frisco, TX – unless, of course, it breaks down and then we have a very hot home to come home to and an AC repair company to call.
What exactly can go wrong with these marvels of modern engineering that would make us need air conditioning repair? Quite a bit, actually.
Unlike furnaces and other central heating units, air conditioners are fairly complex beasts that depend on many conditions being met for the AC system to work the way it’s supposed to in order to make cold air:
➙ The unit has to be sized properly to meet the load requirement for the home.
The cooling load is the amount of conditioned air that’s needed to cool a designated area. If the unit in your home is the wrong size – too big or too small to handle the load – your home won’t be cooled or dehumidified properly. Also, if you increase the load on your home by adding more people and appliances that generate heat or you alter the structure of the home by adding space, your AC won’t be able to keep up.
➙ Your air conditioner is built to carry a certain “charge” of refrigerant to cool your home.
If your unit develops a refrigerant leak, it won’t be able to keep up with the load on your home, even if you don’t add people or space.
➙ The big, noisy box that sits outside your home is the condenser unit and inside the condenser unit are condenser coils.
The job of the coils in the air conditioning circuit is to transfer heat from the inside of the house to the outside air so any kind of dirt, debris or other build-up on the coils can greatly reduce the unit’s cooling ability.
➙ Regular maintenance is possibly the most important condition that has to be met to keep your home cool this summer.
This includes not only pre-season check-ups by a specialist, but regular filter changes and maintenance of the area – including weed trimming and sweeping – around the exterior condenser unit will make a huge difference.
If any of these conditions for optimum running of your air conditioning system aren’t met, your AC could fail you this summer – either by not cooling as you expect it to or by having a complete system breakdown.
To find out more about keeping your air conditioner up and running, call Chrome Heating & Air Conditioning at 469-252-0599. You can schedule an appointment to have one of our technicians give your system a pre-season check.
