What are the Benefits of a Heating/Cooling System Tune-Up?
The two main benefits of cooling and heating tune-ups include preventing sudden breakdowns and saving you money on an ongoing basis. Regular tune-ups ensure your home HVAC systems are running as efficiently as possible. The cumulative effect of taking care of little things — like tightening seals and replacing air filters when they become dirty — translates to savings on your monthly utility bill. It also reduces wear on major appliances, meaning they last longer and deliver a better performance well into the future.
If you invest in regular preventative maintenance for your car, you already know the value of getting a home heating and cooling tune-up. Given central PA’s wildly unpredictable weather, you never know when you might need your heater or A/C to spring into action. Regular HVAC tune-ups let you know you can count on these important appliances to do their job whenever the need arises. Don’t let a small repair turn into a large, expensive one or worse — a sudden interruption to your heating or cooling service.
What Are The Cost Savings Associated With Routine HVAC Maintenance?
When most of us hear the word “maintenance,” we probably associate it with a system, machine or appliance that’s stopped working and requires fixing. More importantly, most of us probably envision having to pay a hefty price, which we’ll need to pay to get our belongings working correctly again. Whether it’s in the context of your car, your lawnmower or your HVAC system, the very word “maintenance” is one we don’t often enjoy hearing.
But did you know not all maintenance is like this? In plenty of cases, upkeep can save you money. It might sound counterintuitive, but maintenance doesn’t have to be about reacting to things that have gone wrong, or about breaking the bank. With careful planning and a regular schedule, you can begin to perform the type of maintenance that can lower your HVAC bills.
Today, we’re here to explain how the idea of routine HVAC works. We’ll break down the importance of preventive maintenance and discuss how, by keeping on top of this routine, you can save money you might never have known was possible to save. Ready? Then let’s get busy planning and saving.
What Are the Different Types of Maintenance?
There are two different categories of maintenance most of us will need to deal with as we care for our utilities and fixtures. And while we use the same word to describe both categories, the reality is that the two are quite different. The different types of maintenance break down as follows.
- Reactive maintenance: We perform this type of maintenance when and only when we encounter a problem. Perhaps something breaks, begins to make a loud noise or smell bad, or there’s strange smoke coming from an unknown source. Maybe the item in question has stopped working with no explanation. When something goes wrong, we use this type of maintenance to uncover the problem and address it, getting the system back in working order as soon as possible.
- Preventive maintenance: This type of maintenance is designed to eliminate or reduce the need for reactive maintenance. While reactive maintenance reacts to a problem, preventive maintenance is there to keep the system clean, effective and running smoothly. By performing preventive maintenance regularly, we can prevent many problems that would eventually require reactive maintenance. Even if issues do still occur, they’ll often be much cheaper to fix because you’ll notice them earlier.
The cost of HVAC maintenance like this will almost always be less than waiting until something goes wrong. Just as a trip to the mechanic for your annual car inspection is cheaper than replacing rusted-out brake lines, so too will preventive maintenance result in more affordable and less frequent reactive repairs in the future.
Cost Differences to Repair or Replace Your HVAC System
Let’s illustrate how preventive maintenance can save you money by examining some hypothetical numbers. Keep in mind these numbers don’t reflect exact figures, but rather serve to help you understand the principle of the situation.
Let’s imagine you bought an HVAC unit for $1,000. This unit has a projected lifespan of 10 years, after which you’ll need to replace it for another $1,000. Because you get regular maintenance, the system performs as promised and lasts the predicted amount of time. Over 10 years, after buying the original unit and eventually its replacement, you’ll have spent exactly $2,000.
Now, let’s imagine you ignore maintenance. You still pay the initial $1,000 to purchase the machine. However, because you’ve neglected your unit, it breaks down after just five years instead of 10 resulting in a second $1,000 investment in just five years. At year ten, if you continue to neglect your unit you will need to replace your unit a second time instead of once. Over the same 10 years, you’ll need to spend $3,000, instead of $2,000.
Preventive maintenance will incur some small costs as well, but these will rarely, if ever, be significant enough to make it worthwhile to ignore this maintenance altogether. Even taking these costs of HVAC maintenance into account, it’s always more cost-effective to put the work into maintaining your system along the way.
How Much Does HVAC Maintenance Cost?
Preventive care for your system saves money, but how much does HVAC maintenance cost? Across the industry, HVAC maintenance prices vary based on several factors, including:
- The system: The age and complexity of your HVAC system can impact the price of HVAC maintenance, as well as the size. Larger systems typically require longer services, leading to increased labor costs, and complex systems may require replacement maintenance components, such as filters and humidifier pads.
- The provider: HVAC maintenance prices vary by provider, and excellent service is available at affordable rates if you know where to look. HVAC maintenance services may be available as individual or packaged services, or as part of a monthly maintenance agreement. Monthly agreements are the easiest, putting the care of your system into the hands of a professional.
- Repairs: Professional HVAC tune-ups include a full system inspection by a trained technician. During the inspection, they could spot broken, damaged or worn components in need of replacement. With your permission, a technician can complete any repairs during the visit to help you avoid further costs.
A monthly HVAC maintenance plan typically provides the most significant value of all the tune-up services offered. These plans may have the lowest up-front prices and provide additional benefits such as discounts on repairs, priority service, guaranteed service and more.
An HVAC maintenance tune-up is an excellent, cost-effective solution to keep your system ready and running. So what’s the price of HVAC maintenance at Home Climates? Request a free quote today to learn more about pricing, the services we perform and other advantages of a monthly agreement.
How Does Preventive HVAC Maintenance Save You Money?
HVAC Maintenance saves you money in a variety of different ways. Let’s look at just a few of the noteworthy ways having an HVAC maintenance plan will help you save money.
1. Catching Minor Problems
How often have you heard a story about a friend or family member who noticed a minor complaint, went to the doctor and received a diagnosis for a potentially serious disease, but received treatment and started feeling better sooner because they were able to catch the problem at an early stage?
The same idea applies to your HVAC system. As you perform maintenance, you may encounter tiny hiccups with the system. By catching these problems early in their development, you can stop them in their tracks and fix them before they have time to develop into something much larger, much more destructive and much more expensive to fix. You may even be able to catch these minor issues before they have time to create larger problems, thus preventing the worst problems from ever happening at all.
2. Improving Energy Efficiency
If you rarely or never perform monthly HVAC preventive maintenance, the odds are good that little problems are slowly building up throughout the system. One of these issues alone may not be enough to cause problems. When all these tiny glitches co-exist, however, the result is that the HVAC system needs to work much harder than it ordinarily would to achieve the same result.
By performing preventive maintenance on your air conditioning, you can stay on top of these small, regular nuisances. Doing so stops them from building up in a way that will put a strain on your HVAC system, resulting in more energy-efficient air conditioning and heating. Your unit will be able to perform the same amount of work while using far less energy to do so, resulting in lower energy bills for you.
3. Improving Lifespan of Units
Wondering how to extend the life of your air conditioning unit? It couldn’t be easier. Take good care of your HVAC system by performing air conditioning preventive maintenance. By doing this, you can often prevent problems from reaching the point where they might damage your machine or make it irreparable.
Most HVAC systems come with an estimated lifespan, but it’s worth remembering this is only an estimation, and it’s usually a conservative one. If you never take the time to care for your unit, it’s quite likely it will fail far short of its estimated lifespan. On the other hand, if you take care to address issues as they arise and keep your unit in good working order, it’s conceivable you’ll not only reach this estimated date, but also far exceed it.
4. Improving Air Quality
We all appreciate having clean air in our homes. It keeps us healthy, helps us breathe easier and benefits our pets as well. For many of us, this goal is so crucial that we’ll install air filters and other devices to keep the air clean, all of which will cost extra money.
If you’re trying to figure out how to improve the air quality in your home, there’s a far easier and cheaper way. Perform regular preventive maintenance on your HVAC unit. Doing so will make your air conditioning and heating far more effective at cycling the air in your home, resulting in better air quality overall and less money spent on supplemental air cleaning units.
Indoor Air Quality Services in Central PA
Why Is HVAC Maintenance Important for PA Homeowners?
Creating and sticking to air conditioning maintenance plans is essential no matter where you live. For homeowners in Pennsylvania, however, there is a specific reason to pay attention to this preventive work.
Pennsylvania is well-known for experiencing extreme weather swings, with the weather switching from hot and humid one day to bitter cold the next day and back again at the drop of a hat. When the weather conditions fluctuate this dramatically, it puts your HVAC unit under heavy strain as it works to keep up. The conditions are now ideal for something to go wrong. For this reason, it’s crucial to remain diligent about keeping on top of your maintenance schedule.
Get Started With Your Home Climates HVAC Tune-Up Plan
With undeniable benefits like these that come from performing regular maintenance on your HVAC system, we hope you’ll see how crucial it is to take the initiative and get busy creating your home maintenance plan. What’s the best place to start when building a plan like this? Get in touch with an HVAC repair and maintenance company near you.
If you’re looking for HVAC repair companies in Central PA, we want to help you. Here at Home Climates, we offer reliable services at prices you can afford, as well as a dependable staff that has the background and training necessary to give your HVAC system the service it deserves. What if you have a breakdown on the coldest day of the year? Call us 24/7 for emergency service.
Learn more about how to set up your HVAC tune-up plan with Home Climates today.
