There’s No Free Lunch With A Tune-Up

Oh, how exciting! While flipping through a Cleveland area magazine, you noticed an ad for HVAC tune-ups at an unbelievable price. You enthusiastically called the company, scheduled the service, but was a little skeptical about how quickly the technician completed the inspection. The tech was in and out in less than 20 minutes. Oh, well. They’re the experts, right? And, it was a good deal after all…

You Get What You Pay For With HVAC Services

Unfortunately, there’s a good chance you didn’t get a full HVAC tune-up at all. What you got was a very cursory inspection, perhaps a filter replacement and a little extra lube—if you were lucky. Like all things in life, there’s no free lunch with a tune-up.

HVAC maintenance is key to your system’s consistency, longevity and energy efficiency. However, those three factors are all dependent on the quality of the maintenance performed. Consider just a handful of items listed on an HVAC maintenance checklist, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy:

• Verification of thermostat settings and on/off functions
• Inspection of the electrical components
• Lubrication of all moving parts
• Inspections of condensate drains and all control systems, ensuring the system cycles as it should on both heat and cool settings
• Cleaning of condenser coils and blower components, along with any necessary adjustments
• Checking coolant levels, topping off as needed
• Inspecting all gas/oil connections, gas pressure, heat exchanger and burner combustion

Assuming your system needs zero adjustments, repairs or parts replacement, tune-ups never take less than 45 minutes, and typically require closer to an hour. Of course, any necessary repairs will require more time.

So, when you take into consideration the training, experience, labor and materials required to perform a thorough HVAC tune-up, you can understand that price does matter. The best HVAC companies offer reasonable prices that make sense for the length of time and list of tasks- in our case a thorough 21 point inspection for either heating or cooling- required for a particular service.

Additionally, if your HVAC company condemns your unit and recommends replacement, we offer a no charge second opinion just so that you are sure of the diagnosis.  We even offer this same service within our own company, just to be sure that, if needed, our clients are absolutely confident of our recommendation.

P.K. Wadsworth Heating & Cooling has provided no-nonsense, customer-focused HVAC services to Cleveland residents for 75 years. While we can’t offer a free picnic, contact us and experience top-notch HVAC tune-ups at a reasonable price. Ask about our annual service agreements to provide you the peace of mind that your equipment always will be operating at peak efficiency.