Annual HVAC service helps to keep your home's equipment running efficiently, reliably, and affordably, but what happens if you ignore this essential home maintenance task? Many homeowners choose to forego these services altogether, and their systems still run, at least for a while. If skipping a tune-up won't immediately cause failures, then why should you bother at all?
As with most HVAC issues, it's a matter of long-term benefits for short-term costs. Ignoring the importance of annual tune-ups will save you some money right now, but you're likely to spend more in the future. Here are just three things that can happen if you choose to ignore the importance of keeping your air conditioner well-maintained.
1. Increased Utility Bills
Air conditioner efficiency will inevitably degrade over time. This degradation occurs for numerous reasons, some of them unavoidable, even with proper maintenance. For example, mechanical parts such as your blower and compressor will suffer wear with usage, reducing their efficiency and ultimately leading to higher utility costs.
While you can't avoid all of these problems, routine maintenance will help to ensure that you aren't losing efficiency due to other, more easily solvable issues. Clogged air filters, low refrigerant levels, dirty coils, and many other standard maintenance items can drastically reduce HVAC efficiency. Routine tune-ups help you discover and solve these problems to help keep your utility bills low.
2. Reduced Reliability
Common maintenance problems reduce your air conditioner's efficiency by causing other components to work harder. Clogged air filters force your blower to struggle more as it pushes air, while low refrigerant levels can strain your compressor. Nearly anything that reduces the efficiency of your air conditioning system will also cause critical system components to degrade more quickly.
Ignoring your annual AC tune-up can mean missing some of these problems, forcing your system to work much harder than necessary to keep you cool. While this might not cause immediate failures, it will mean more expensive repairs in the future and a reduced lifespan for your system as a whole.
3. More Expensive Repairs
The phrase "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" is as valid for your HVAC system as it is for the human body. HVAC problems often start relatively minor, but they can quickly cascade into more costly and troublesome failures. A refrigerant leak might not create many noticeable issues at first, but your refrigerant pressure may eventually drop so low that your compressor can fail.
Every AC tune-up includes a routine inspection of many system components, allowing you to catch these problems before they explode into something much worse. In this way, your small investment right now can save you hundreds of dollars or more in future repairs.
For more information on AC tune-up, contact a professional near you.
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