Welcome to another edition of Cogburn’s Heating and Air Conditioning Radio with Byron Cogburn, and Byron, we had a mild winter, we’ve had a mild and wet spring, but we all know the heat is coming for the summer. What do people need to be doing to get ready?

Byron: Well Tim, people normally do nothing. Their A/C is working fine right now, it’s 74, 80 degrees outside, and they’re happy. And then once the weather turns around, then they realize there’s a problem. So the thing you want to do right now is to give us a call so that we can come out and take a look, and make sure your refrigerant levels are right, equipment’s doing what it should do, and that you’re prepared for the warm weather when it gets here.

Tim: And typically around here, the heat happens all of a sudden. So getting the unit ready means that you don’t suddenly find yourself waking up at one in the morning wondering whether or not the air conditioning’s working.

Byron: Right. You want to be a little pro-active right now because there are things that do happen. Once the weather turns around, the humidity’s up, the heat’s on, your A/C is removing about twenty gallons of humidity from your home a day. Now your drains are stopped up, you have drain safeties that are keeping the equipment from running, you have refrigerant levels that aren’t right, your unit’s stopped up with the debris, it can’t remove the heat like it should, and your left without cooling. And then guess what you have to do, you have to call me on Saturday night at 9:00 or Sunday morning, pay double time, no not really, but anyway, you do pay extra to have somebody come out after hours.

Tim: So there are some other things that people can do that they can do on their own, and that’s washing down the compressor outside.

Byron: There’s basically two things you can do. One change your filter, and two again wash the outdoor unit, to make sure that the grass clippings are free, and the main area that you want to look at is the back side of your A/C unit outside, the area that’s between the house and the unit itself. That’s usually the worst areas.

Tim: And when that gets dirty, what does it do to the unit that threatens your ability to stay cool?

Byron: Well your air conditioning system, what it’s doing basically is removing heat from your home, and rejecting that heat outside where it’s unobjectable. And the unit outside is the part that is rejecting the heat from your home, and when that coil area is restricted, it cannot do that like it should. And so it’s just not going to keep you cool.

Tim: Now we’ve talked about air filters before, and you mentioned changing that air filter, but just as a reminder, how often do you recommend people change the filter in their system?

Byron: A pleated filter, at least 60 days, maybe go 90. The best way to do it is whenever you get your electric bill, check your air filter. That’s probably one of the easiest ways to remember to do it. So 60 to 90 days.

Tim: Okay so if someone’s going to give you a call to say I want to get you out to do a tune-up so that I don’t wake up at 1 in the morning sweating, how far out are you able to schedule? How soon can someone have y’all get to their house?

Byron: Well we are a same-day service company, I’ve always been that way, so you could call us in the mornings and more than likely we’ll have somebody out that afternoon to preform the tune-up. Or we can schedule in advance and we schedule specific times, not between 8 and 12 Monday through Friday, usually we have specific times so either 8:30, 11, 10:30, or whatever. But there’s specific times and we’ll show up at that time.

Tim: Which means you don’t have to wait at the house all day for that service guy to show up.

Byron: Oh exactly.

Tim: All right, this has been another edition of Cogburn’s Heating and Air Conditioning Radio.