Takes about a minute. No obligation.
A dirty coil or a low charge makes the compressor work harder to move the same amount of heat. That extra work shows up on the meter. Texas electricity ran 14.94 cents per kilowatthour in 2024, and Fort Worth summers ask a lot of the system that moves it. A unit running longer than it should, or working harder than it should, burns through that rate every hour it's on. A tune-up gets the coil clean and the charge right, so the compressor stops fighting to do the same job.
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
Hail has hit Tarrant County 416 times between 2015 and 2024.
Outdoor units sit outside through all of it, so check the coil and cabinet for damage before summer asks anything of them.
Wind and tornadoes do their own kind of damage, separate from hail. Tarrant County had 253 damaging wind events and 22 tornadoes over that same stretch, and both can bend fins, loosen panels or throw debris into the cabinet without a mark that's obvious from a few feet away. A tune-up has someone looking at the unit up close, not just glancing at it from the patio. Outages matter too. A third of Texas households lost power for a day or more in 2024, and a system that was already running hard before that happens has less room to recover once it's back on. Checked and cleaned before summer, it starts the season working the way it's supposed to.
A clean coil and the right charge keep the compressor from working harder than it has to, and here that extra work costs more per hour than most places pay. Getting it looked at now is what keeps that rate from climbing before summer even starts.
Find a contractorCooling runs here from May through October, and the afternoon high averages 94°F through June, July and August. That's the stretch the compressor runs longest, with little break overnight to cool back down. A capacitor or contactor that's already weak tends to give out under that kind of load, not while it's sitting idle. The coil takes the same beating, and a dirty one only makes the compressor work harder to keep up. Whatever is going to fail this year usually shows itself once the heat sets in.
A clogged filter chokes off airflow across the indoor coil. Starved of air, that coil can get cold enough to ice over, and once ice forms, the problem feeds itself. A filter should be checked monthly and changed on a regular schedule, not left until it looks gray.
The indoor coil pulls moisture out of the air all day, and that water has to leave through the condensate drain. Algae and dirt build up in that line over time and block it. Once it backs up, the unit either shuts itself off or sends water into the house instead of outside.
A tune-up checks the refrigerant charge, cleans the coils, tests the capacitor and tightens the electrical connections.
A real tune-up starts outside at the condenser. The tech pulls the cabinet if needed and checks the capacitor and contactor, since those are the parts most likely to weaken from heat cycling and cause a no-start. The coil gets cleaned, not just looked at, because caked-on dirt and grass clippings cut airflow across it the same way a clogged filter does on the other side. Refrigerant charge gets checked against what the system calls for, since too little or too much both make the compressor work harder than it should. Inside, the blower and the indoor coil get looked over, and the drain line gets checked for algae or buildup before it backs up. Electrical connections get tightened, because a loose wire at the contactor is a common reason a unit stops cooling partway through the season. None of this requires anything to be broken first.
