ServiceMax Blog: Posts Tagged ‘Air Conditioner Repair’

Your Air Conditioner’s Expansion Valve Might Need Repair

Monday, March 18th, 2024
AC-technicians-working-on-an-outdoor-AC-unit

Some of the components of your AC system are obvious and easy to understand. If we tell you that there’s a blower fan, and a motor which powers it, you will have already assumed as much. You also know that there’s refrigerant, which flows through coils throughout the system. But some air conditioner components are a little more mysterious.

The more you know about your AC system, the more empowered you will be to take good care of it and keep it running as well as possible for as long as possible. For this reason, we love to provide HVAC education to our customers.

Today, we’d like to tell you about your air conditioner’s thermal expansion valve, and how to know if it might require repair.

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What a Hissing AC Means

Monday, June 27th, 2022
tools-on-ac-unit

The summer season is underway, and there’s nothing you want to hear less than a strange noise coming from your AC.

Hissing noises aren’t uncommon, and many homeowners are surprised to find their air conditioner emitting this strange sound when they turn their thermostats down.

What does hissing in your AC mean? It could stem from several sources, including leaks and an unchanged filter.

Any foreign sound coming from your air conditioner is a call to action. When in doubt, always schedule air conditioner repair in Chicago, IL. But first, it might help to do some research and figure out what’s going on behind the scenes before you make the call.

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How Uneven Cooling Can Happen in Your Home

Monday, July 15th, 2019

airflow-diagramYou can have a working air conditioning system sending out cooled air to your house, but that doesn’t mean you’ll have a house that’s cooled evenly throughout. You can expect rooms with more sunlight exposure to feel warmer, for example. However, a well-installed and designed HVAC system should be able to give you a distribution of conditioned air around the house that will maintain comfort levels, no matter how hot it gets outside

If you’ve already enjoyed a few years of quality performance from your home’s AC, what does it mean when you start to notice hot spots around the house? Uneven cooling can come from simple problems, but it can also indicate a need for air conditioning repair in Chicago, IL or even that it’s time to arrange to have a new AC put in place.

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How to Find Out (Politely) the Age of Your Air Conditioner

Monday, September 10th, 2018

air-conditioners-recyclingIt’s not polite to ask people their age—unless they’re children, in which case they’ll probably tell you their exact age to half a year without you having to bring it up.

You never need to worry about offending your air conditioner by asking its age. But you may not know how to go about “asking.” This can be a problem if you’re debating whether to replace the system before next summer. An AC’s age is a vital piece of info for choosing “repair vs. replace.” If you didn’t originally install the air conditioner, you may have no idea how long it’s been in your home.

We can help. Discovering the age of a cooling system is simple once you know how. (Figuring out what to do afterwards is the tricky part!)

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Spring HVAC Maintenance—Now Is the Time!

Monday, May 7th, 2018

air-conditioner-unit-being-repairedYou may already be looking ahead to your calendar toward the end of June and the official first day of summer. If you are, make sure that when you think of the coming summer you also think about handling the summer heat with an air conditioner in the best shape possible. If you haven’t arranged for professional maintenance for your air conditioner yet—the spring tune-up and inspection—now is definitely time to have it done!

If this is the first time you’ve heard about spring maintenance, we’re glad we got your attention. Find out more about this vital service below.

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Don’t Shut Down Your AC Yet if It Needs Repairs

Monday, October 9th, 2017

tools-on-ac-unitLast month we offered tips on how to shut down your air conditioning system at the end of the season so it’s in the best shape for next year. But since your air conditioner is probably still putting in days of work here in the early fall and it’s not yet time to shut it off completely, we want to warn you to keep a sharp watch for possible malfunctions. If your AC needs to have repairs, call our technicians right away to schedule service before you need to shut down the system for the coming winter weather.

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Planning for Your AC’s Future at the End of the Season

Monday, September 11th, 2017

frozen-over-air-conditionerThe summer weather is starting to recede: the official end of the season is less than two weeks away. You’re soon going to start making plans for turning on the heating system that will warm your home through later fall and into the winter. A crucial part of those plans includes schedule routine heating maintenance: sign up for our MAX Comfort Plan and we’ll have your heating taken care of!

But part of fall planning involves the air conditioning system. Simply shutting it off for the season isn’t the best idea. You want the AC in excellent shape for that first day you need it in spring. The way you want your heater to be prepared when the first cold day hits, you also want your AC prepared. There are a few steps you can take at this time of the year to help.

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4 Ways You Might Spend Too Much on Air Conditioning This Summer

Monday, June 5th, 2017

air-conditioner-money-saverYou’ll need to have your home’s air conditioning system running during the summer to stay cool. That’s just a basic part of Chicagoland Survival 101—our summers are hot and humid. Of course, keeping a home cool doesn’t come for free, and you can expect to see a rise in your electricity costs over the summer because of the extra use of the air conditioner.

However, air conditioning bills in homes are often higher than they need to be. Below we’ve listed 4 of the ways you may end up wasting energy with your AC over the summer—and how you prevent them.

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No Cool Air from the AC? 4 Reasons Why!

Monday, May 8th, 2017

woman-in-front-of-fan

It’s May, and chances are that you’re already getting some use from your air conditioning system in Wilmette, IL. It may be only a few days during the week for short stretches—we aren’t fully done with the cool weather yet—but it will be enough for you to tell if something major is wrong with the air conditioner. For example, you’ll know when the air coming from room vents isn’t cool when the AC is running.

Obviously, a cooling system that doesn’t actually cool is not much use to you. It’s just acting like a big fan, and that doesn’t help when temperatures climb. There are a number of possibilities for why an air conditioner will lose its cooling power. Some are simple errors that you can correct yourself. Others are more complicated and will require HVAC technicians to diagnose and correct them. And some are serious trouble that place your AC in danger of a major failure, possibly even an early replacement, unless professionally fixed as soon as possible.

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Fixing a Hard-Starting Compressor in an Air Conditioner

Monday, August 1st, 2016

The hardest-working part of your air conditioning system is the compressor. You’re probably familiar with the sound it makes—it’s the whirring noise that you hear each time the AC starts the cooling cycle—and it’s essential for providing the comfortable environment in your home during hot days. The compressor is a pump that places refrigerant under pressure to turn it into a hot gas so it will circulate through the system, moving heat from the inside to the outside. Basically, if you don’t have a working compressor, you don’t have an air conditioner.

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