Especially as the temperature starts to climb in the summer, it can be pretty stressful to notice that your air conditioning isn’t working the way that it’s supposed to. This can become even more stressful after you look up how much it costs to repair AC. After all, no one wants to be surprised by a massive expense!
The good news is that there are some things you can do when you realize your AC isn’t working. In this guide, we’ll break down some basic steps you can take to try and determine what’s wrong with your AC and how you can fix it.
Here, we’ll take a look at a few ways to help you get your AC working, cool off, and save you money on the repair process!
What You Need for AC Repair:
Contents
- Locate your AC unit in your home
- Access to the breaker switchboard in your home
- Replacement filter if necessary
- This is only in the case that you use disposable AC filters.
- Vacuum for cleaning your AC filter
- This is only in the case that you use reusable AC filters.
- Batteries that fit your thermostat
- You’ll only need batteries if your thermostat isn’t hard-wired into the wall.
How to Repair Your Air-Conditioning
Step 1: Check the Filter
This is a fairly basic problem that’s easy to tackle. If you know what to look for, it can save you a pretty penny on hiring someone for ac repair as well.
If you find that you have no or weak air output from your AC unit, start by checking your filters. Since it’s out of sight and out of mind, it’s easy to leave cleaning or replacing your AC filters off of your to-do list. However, it can halt your AC’s operation in its tracks.
The filter is often protected by a compartment cover but it should be fairly easy to locate. If you have a disposable filter that’s dirty, you can simply replace it with an identical model. On the other hand, if you have a reusable filter, you can clean it with a vacuum but individual filters will have individual care instructions with them.
Step 2: Check Your Breaker Box
What if the airflow isn’t the problem with your AC, though? What if the problem you’re dealing with is that your AC unit won’t turn on at all? This is indicative of a likely electrical issue and the answer is actually to check around your house before blaming the AC unit.
Just like if your kitchen light wouldn’t turn on one day or if the living room suddenly went dark, you’ll want to stop by your breaker box. Here, you can make sure that all areas of your home still have power and are unaffected by a tripped breaker. Even if the breaker looks fine, you can always try to troubleshoot the problem by turning the breaker on and off again.
Step 3: Making Sure Everything is Still Plugged in
As we’ve said, if your AC unit won’t run at all, it might be an electrical problem. After all, without electricity to make the fan turn, your AC unit physically can’t circulate the air in your home to cool you down or warm you up.
That’s why you have to go through all of the basic steps, like checking the breaker, to make sure that you have power supplied to your AC. Still, there’s another potential culprit you’ll want to rule out before throwing in the towel. It might sound silly but take the time to make sure that your AC unit is plugged in. If something jostled it lose, you may have missed it and it could save you a hefty repair bill.
Step 4: Check the Thermostat Batteries
One thing you might not think of is the fact that the thermostat on your wall may take batteries. This means that you could be blaming your AC when your thermostat just isn’t sending it the signals it needs to work effectively.
To check the batteries in a thermostat, you can simply remove the thermostat from the wall. On the back, you’ll see a space that is intended for batteries. Replacing them may fix the issue.
On the other hand, many thermostats today are hard-wired into the wall. This means they use the electricity in your home to power them. In these cases, changing the batteries isn’t a concern but steps like checking the breaker can still help.
How Much Does it Cost to Repair a Blower Fan in an AC Unit?
As we discussed earlier, jumping online to search how much it costs to repair AC, you might come up with some pretty frightening results. As an example, if you look up how much it costs to replace the fan motor in an AC unit, you can wrack up a bill of $300 to $600. Of course, this is only one potential problem that comes with a hefty price tag. So, why is AC repair so expensive?
The truth is, there are a lot of factors that play into making air-conditioning repair costs so high. Here, we’ll take a look at a few reasons that these costs might be so high.
For one, if you hire someone to fix your AC, not just anyone will show up. The professionals who do this are HVAC certified and those licenses and certification process comes with a cost they have to cover in their profit. Similarly, technology is always changing as well, forcing them to keep up.
Like many pieces of technology today, ACs often feature expensive parts. If they’re expensive up front, it stands to reason that they’d be costly to repair or replace.
Conclusion
Did you enjoy our tutorial? By following these steps, you can check your AC without having to pay high fees. Make sure to share this and let us know what you think in the comments!
