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A coil caked with dust or a charge that's drifted low makes your AC run longer to cool the same house. That extra runtime shows up on the meter, and Texas electricity ran 14.94 cents per kilowatthour in 2024, higher than a lot of the country.
Your AC in San Marcos isn't an appliance that runs a few weeks a year. A unit working harder than it needs to burns that extra power across the whole stretch it runs, not just on the hottest days.
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
Your AC in San Marcos runs cooling for about seven months, April through October.
Seven months of afternoons near 94 degrees wears parts down faster than one season should.
A hailstorm bends the fins on an outdoor unit, and bent fins choke the airflow the coil needs to shed heat. Wind-blown debris does the same thing from the other direction, packing leaves and grit into the coil face where you can't see it. Before summer gets going, a technician can pull the panel, check the coil and fins for damage, and clear out what's built up since last year. That's a quick check against a unit having to fight its own condenser all summer.
A coil that's clogged or a charge that's drifted low makes your AC run longer than it should, and that extra runtime lands on a bill already higher than most states pay. A tune-up gets the coil clean and the charge right before the stretch of cooling months ahead, so you're not paying for the waste.
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Seven months doesn't leave much room to catch a worn part before it fails outright. Get the system looked at before April, while it's sitting idle, so a weak capacitor or a contactor going bad shows up on a technician's gauge instead of as a dead unit in the middle of summer.
A capacitor loses its charge slowly over years, not all at once. A contactor's points pit a little more each time they close. None of that announces itself. Left alone, the weak part keeps working until the moment it can't, usually on the day the AC is running hardest.
A tune-up is when a technician checks refrigerant charge, tightens electrical connections, and looks at the coil before any of it causes a breakdown. Skip it and those same issues don't go away, they just stay invisible until the system stops cooling and the diagnosis happens the hard way.
A tune-up checks the refrigerant charge, cleans the coils, tests the capacitor and tightens the electrical connections.
A tune-up starts with the refrigerant charge, checked against what the system is supposed to hold rather than guessed at. Too little and the compressor runs harder for less cooling. The condenser coil and evaporator coil both get checked, since either one coated in dust or grime can't shed heat the way it should. A technician tightens electrical connections, because a loose one heats up and eventually fails right there. The contactor and capacitor get tested under load, not just looked at, since both can read fine sitting still and still be close to done. Airflow gets checked too, at the blower and across the coil, since a system starved for air works harder no matter how clean everything else is.
