How a service call goes
First we diagnose. That means checking the thermostat, the breaker and disconnect, the capacitor and contactor, refrigerant pressures, the coils, the blower and the condensate drain, in that general order, until the actual fault shows up. We tell you what we found in plain words and show you the burned part or the clogged drain if you want to see it.
Then comes the price. Every repair is quoted in writing after the diagnosis and before any part is ordered, and if a repair costs close to what a new system would, we say so. You decide, with the facts in front of you. If you say yes, the repair usually happens on the same visit, because the parts that fail most often around here, capacitors, contactors, fan motors and drain fittings, ride on the truck. The page on the no-cool calls we see most goes into those common failures in more detail.
Straight answers on repair or replace
Some systems are worth fixing for years. Some are not, and we would rather say so on the first visit than sell you three repairs in a row. The biggest swing factor here is refrigerant. Older systems still running R-22 cost more to recharge every year since production of it ended in 2020, so a leak on a fifteen-year-old unit often turns the conversation from repair to replace. We lay out both paths, the repair price and what replacing would involve, and let you choose. Pollen matters too: a coil packed with spring pollen from March into May can look like a dying compressor, and a cleaning sometimes buys a system several more summers.