des moines heating and air conditioning

When Do You Need Professional Heating and Air Conditioning Repairs?

You may perfectly understand just how important it is for your HVAC unit to be in top shape. You want it to give out the best performance otherwise you could be breathing in dirty air or suffering through the worst temperatures of the summer and winter. The most reasonable course of action is to hire professionals to handle heating and air conditioning repairs. The question though is figuring out when your unit needs their professional skills or if it is a problem you can handle on your own?

Troubleshoot First

The best way to figure out whether or not your HVAC unit needs the professionals is to run some troubleshooting procedures. Most of the time, your HVAC unit will come with a manual that lists all the basic troubleshooting steps but the problem is most people ignore the manual, lose it, or simply throw it away. Luckily you can find troubleshooting procedures on the web.

The most common troubleshooting basics are:

-    Check if the HVAC unit is properly connected to a reliable power source. The wires might not be hooked together, the circuit breaker might be down, or the cables might have been disrupted.

-    There is no cooling: when this occurs the Freon might be leaking or the condenser might be obstructed. Checking for leaking Freon is pretty basic

– simply look for excessive dripping. The condenser needs to be free from any obstruction such as leaves, dead insects, and others. Clean this out.

-    The air filter might be clogged. This results to an HVAC unit exerting too much effort (and thus too much energy) without really achieving a change in temperature. When the filters are dirty it also means your air is now filled with dirt, dust, and allergens. To fix this simply turn the unit off and clean out the filters.

Looking at the Thermostat

Very often the repair work relies solely on the thermostat. Did you set it too high or did you set it too low? Is it at the right temperature when compared to the outside temperature? Many HVAC units won’t turn on if the thermostat is adjusted to the same temperature as it is outside. Sometimes the fans won’t automatically turn on when the thermostat is set at the wrong level.

Many times the thermostat itself could be broken. You will want to troubleshoot on this as well and just replace it before running expensive repairs and maintenance on the HVAC unit itself. This can save you a lot of money and time. It can be silly to call in professional repairmen just to discover you only have to adjust or replace the thermostat.

Complete Shutdown

Then again there are those situations where the HVAC unit will break down completely. Sparks might fly, the unit might be bellowing smoke, or it just might be dead and won’t turn on no matter what you do. During these cases where the unit completely shut downs, don’t try to run troubleshooting procedures because of the high risks and immediately call on the professionals to take a look and get it fixed.