Air conditioning servicing, whoever fitted it
Most of what we do is fitting new systems, but not every call is about that. If yours is a few years old, or somebody else put it in, servicing keeps it running properly and keeps it out of a heatwave breakdown you didn’t see coming.
We service across the whole Midlands, on any make, and we are F-Gas registered, which matters more than it sounds — see below.
Do air conditioning units need servicing?
Yes, once a year for a home system.
It is not a legal requirement for a homeowner the way a gas safety check is for a landlord, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something. It is simply that these machines reward it. A serviced system uses less electricity to do the same job, it holds its cooling and heating properly, and the faults that end up expensive nearly all start as something cheap that somebody could have spotted.
There is a second reason that applies more now than it used to. If you run yours as heating through the winter as well as cooling in summer — and most people who discover it can, do — then it is working most of the year rather than a fortnight of it. A machine doing twelve months of work wants looking at once in the twelve.
Spring is the sensible time to book it. Not because anything changes in April, but because a fault found in April is an appointment and the same fault found in the last week of June is a fortnight of waiting behind everybody else who has just discovered theirs is broken too.
Why a neglected system costs you money
A machine that never gets looked at works harder to do the same job. Dust closes up the airflow, the coils stop shedding heat as easily, and the system runs longer and draws more to reach the temperature you asked for. You do not notice it happening, because it happens over years.
What you do notice is the day it stops. And by then the cheap fault has usually become an expensive one — a small refrigerant leak left alone long enough to run the system dry, or a blocked drain left alone long enough to come through a ceiling.
What a service covers
Six things, none of them dramatic. That is rather the point of a service.
- The filters
- The most common reason a machine stops cooling properly. A blocked filter makes it work harder for less, and it is the cheapest thing on this list to put right.
- Refrigerant level, and a leak check
- A system that is low on gas is usually a system with a leak, so topping it up without finding the leak is money you spend again next year. This is the part that legally needs an F-Gas registered engineer.
- The drain and the condensate run
- Cooling makes water, and that water has to go somewhere. A blocked drain is what turns into a stained ceiling or a wet wall, and it is nearly always cheap to catch early.
- Electrics and controls
- Connections, isolators and the controls you actually touch. Undramatic, and it is the safety side of the job, which is why it is on the list at all.
- The outdoor unit
- Coils, the fan, and whether anything has grown up around it since we were last there. An outdoor box packed in behind a shrub cannot get rid of the heat it has just collected.
- A run in both directions
- Tested cooling and tested heating before we leave, because the same box does both and most people only ever notice one of them is broken in the week they need it.
F-Gas, and why it decides who can touch it
The refrigerant inside these machines is controlled by F-Gas regulations. Legally, only an engineer registered to handle it may open up that side of the system.
Kevin is registered, so the person servicing your system can open up the refrigerant side of it, which is where a fair amount of what goes wrong actually lives. It is a fair question to ask whoever you call, and one of the few in this trade where the answer is a legal fact you can check rather than a matter of opinion.
Every install we do carries a year’s workmanship guarantee as standard. Krown’s maintenance plan, arranged when you are fitted rather than at quote stage, stretches that up to five years.
Any make, whoever fitted it
Most of the servicing we do is on systems we did not install. Mitsubishi Electric, LG and Daikin are the three we fit and the three we know best, but a split system is a split system and we will service whatever is on your wall.
If the firm that fitted yours has gone quiet, or gone altogether, that is a common enough reason to ring and not an awkward one.
What servicing costs
The same answer as everything else on this site: we will tell you on the phone, and we would rather do that than print a number that is wrong for your machine. A single wall unit in an accessible spot and a multi-room system three floors up are not the same job.
Book a service, or get your installation price
We’ll ring you back within two hours.Mon to Sat, 10am to 6pm. Outside those hours, first thing the next working day.