Imagine your car was losing air from one of its tires. You should get that sorted out right away, shouldn’t you? If you don’t, it will lose more and more air. Eventually, you’ll be driving on the rim, causing damage to it and potentially other parts of your car as well. And you’ll be using more gasoline because of all the drag.
Your air conditioner is the same. When there’s a problem, even if it seems quite minor, you should have it fixed right away. If you don’t, the problem will worsen, affect other parts of your HVAC system, increase your air conditioner’s energy consumption, and drive up your utility bills. Prompt AC repair is necessary to protect your air conditioner. Let us explain why.
How Small Problems Worsen
Perhaps the small issue you’ve noticed is that your air conditioner is making an odd hissing sound. That doesn’t seem too terrible, does it? But that sound indicates that refrigerant is escaping from a leak somewhere in your air conditioner’s system of coils. If you don’t have it sealed up and refilled with refrigerant promptly, more and more will leak out.
As the system tries to run without enough refrigerant, it won’t be able to cool your home as well. Your thermostat will keep calling for more cooling, forcing the compressor to run more and more of the time. Ice may start to develop on the evaporator coils, which insulates them, further preventing heat from being absorbed from your home, further straining the compressor, in a vicious cycle.
Or perhaps the sound you noticed is a rattle, from something as minor as a loose screw or wobbling fan blade. If you don’t have it repaired, that component could come completely free and damage something else in your AC unit! Perhaps it’s a grinding sound. The bearings in the motor have worn down. Do you want to replace just the bearings, or wait until the motor is too damaged, and replace the whole thing?
How Problems Cause Inefficiency
There are two main ways that an AC problem can cause inefficiency, forcing the air conditioner to consume more and more energy, and increasing your electric bill. The first is simply when the air conditioner spends more time running, and the second is when it starts and stops much more frequently.
A problem like the refrigerant leak described above will cause the AC to run more of the time because it just isn’t managing to get your home cool enough. Other problems can cause that, too: airflow blockages, air leaks in ductwork, broken fans, struggling fan motors, miscalibrated thermostats, and more.
Some problems can cause short cycling. This occurs when the problem—for example, an overheating motor—is serious enough to trigger the system’s automatic shutdown. Just a moment later, the thermostat signals for cooling, and the AC tries to start up, but it gets shut down again, over and over. That startup is the part of the cycle that uses the most energy, and now it’s happening four or six or ten times as often!
Don’t let small concerns become huge problems, and don’t let your electric bills skyrocket. Get air conditioning repair in Warminster, PA as soon as you notice that something’s wrong.
Contact Platinum Plumbing & Heating, Inc. today to schedule an appointment with our pros.