Keep your cool – and your air conditioner running – with a Charlie’s maintenance agreement
Keeping your air conditioner running is important but when it breaks down, you want two answers, and you want them fast: Who do I call to fix it and how much is it going to cost to get my air conditioner running?

But consider a new reality – one in which these worries are virtually eliminated from your life. This peace of mind can be yours with a maintenance agreement with Charlie’s Tropic Heating & Air Conditioning.

We say “virtually” eliminated and not “completely” because in an imperfect world, you can never guarantee that a piece of machinery as intricate and complex as your central air conditioner won’t encounter some unexpected fluke. But a maintenance agreement with Charlie’s is absolutely your best line of defense against your air conditioner breaking down in the first place – thereby eliminating the worry about who to call and how much a repair is going to cost.

Why air conditioner maintenance is vital

You trust the experience factor of Charlie’s; our licensed air conditioner technicians have been serving residents of northeast Florida since 1998. Or you can turn to no lesser authority on the subject than the U.S. Department of Energy: “Maintain your equipment to prevent future problems and unwanted costs. Keep your cooling and heating system at peak performance by having a contractor do annual pre-season check-ups.” The department also provides a more ominous warning about neglecting regular air conditioner maintenance: “Neglecting necessary maintenance ensures a steady decline in air conditioning performance while energy use steadily increases,” it says.

Therein lies another incentive to sign a maintenance agreement with Charlie’s: If your household is like many others in America, your energy bill is about $2,000 a year. Since we live in Florida, where many people run their air conditioners nearly year-round, you probably spend about $600 or $700 of that amount on air conditioning. A maintenance agreement ensures that your central air conditioner – one of the biggest investments you’ve made in your home – runs cleanly and efficiently and keeps those costs in check.

Risk factors can incite the chills

At the risk of calling your air conditioner “touchy” or “quirky,” it can be temperamental. You can forgive its moodiness when you consider the sheer complexity of its function (and far more complex than your furnace): It pulls warm air out of your home, blows the air over cool pipes, changes it from a liquid to a gas and then back again, moves refrigerant between coils and then sends excess moisture (called condensate) through a condensate drain. Along this journey, many things can go wrong. The department of energy says five problems are most common of all:

• Refrigerant problems (in the form of either normal depletion or a leak)

• Drainage problems (often caused by blocked or cracked drain lines)

• Electrical problems or failures (often stemming from dirty, damaged or corroded wires or connections or a worn blower component or compressor)

• Thermostat problems (often triggered by calibration or placement issues)

• Maintenance problems (those that can, in fact, be completely eliminated with a maintenance agreement with Charlie’s)

Charlie’s air conditioning technicians check for all of these potential problems during the twice-yearly maintenance checks covered under a maintenance agreement – the very same problems that can cause an air conditioner to break down. Since Charlie’s wants to close the gap between “virtually” and “completely” eliminating all other problems, we follow the recommendations of the department of energy and:

• Check the filter and replace it, if necessary

• Lubricate motors and moving parts

• Tighten the electrical connections and measure the voltage and current on the motors

• Clean the evaporator and condenser coils

• Remove dirt and mildew from the blower and adjust the blower components

• Clean the compressor

• Inspect all safety controls

If you’re starting to think of a maintenance agreement as a form of insurance, you’ve got the right idea. And if you’re thinking of a maintenance agreement offered by the experienced air conditioning technicians at Charlie’s, we’re just one phone call away – and one step away from virtually eliminating the anxiety over ever having to make an emergency service call again.