Frequently Asked Questions

We answer the phone from 6am to 7pm, seven days a week, and handle emergencies across all four counties. Dispatch is triaged by severity, not distance: a house with no cooling and an infant, an elderly resident or anyone with a heart condition goes ahead of a routine call. Same-day service is usually available. If your system is down right now, the emergency AC repair page lists what to check before you call.

Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando counties, which runs from Sun City Center in the south to Weeki Wachee and Brooksville in the north. That is a little over a hundred communities, and the locations index lists every one. There is no travel or mileage charge anywhere in that area. Distance does not change the price of a visit.

The fee is quoted on the phone before anyone is dispatched, so you know what the visit costs before a truck moves. It covers finding the fault and explaining it, and there is no travel charge on top, wherever you are in the service area. If a repair makes sense on the spot, you approve its price first. Nobody opens your system and then negotiates.

We hold factory certifications on nine brands: Carrier, Goodman, Rheem, LG, Midea, Trane, Daikin, Mitsubishi and Lennox. Factory-certified means the manufacturer trained us on its equipment, and on several of these brands an installation by us keeps the full registered warranty intact where an uncertified install would quietly shorten it. We repair brands outside that list too; the data plate tells us which parts a system needs. The brand pages cover what tends to fail on each.

We do, under license CAC1820870, and we meet the inspector ourselves. A full system changeout requires a mechanical permit in every county we work in, and the inspection that follows is your protection: an independent check that the work meets code. Be wary of any quote that leaves permitting to you or suggests skipping it. Unpermitted HVAC work surfaces at the worst possible time, usually when you sell the house and the buyer's inspector asks for records.

Search the license number on the Florida DBPR license lookup, which is public and free. Ours is CAC1820870. The CAC prefix means state-certified air conditioning contractor, allowed to work in any Florida county, as opposed to a registered license limited to specific local jurisdictions. The lookup shows who personally holds the license, its status, and any discipline on record. Run that check on anyone who quotes you, including us. A contractor who hesitates to hand over a license number has answered your question already.

A straightforward changeout finishes in a day: the old equipment comes out in the morning, the new system goes in, and the afternoon belongs to commissioning static pressure, blower speed, temperature split, condensate drain and float switch. We do not leave before those numbers are right. Scope is what stretches the timeline: duct repairs, panel work or a relocated air handler can add a day or more, and you will know that at the quote. The installation page walks through the day in order.

Age and refrigerant decide most of these calls. A capacitor or a contactor on a healthy eight-year-old system is worth replacing, no question. A compressor or a coil on a system past twelve years, especially one running R-410A as that refrigerant is phased down, usually costs a large share of a new system and buys only a year or two. Where both options make sense we quote them side by side and let the numbers argue. A system we can fix properly, we fix.

No. R-410A is still produced, still available to contractors, and a well-maintained R-410A system installed in the last several years has a long life ahead of it. New residential equipment now ships with R-454B, so the change matters when you are buying, not while you are maintaining. The one real shift: repairs that involve refrigerant will get gradually more expensive as R-410A production winds down, which nudges the repair-or-replace math on older systems. The full picture is in our R-454B guide.

Yes. Most of the repair work we do started that way. The model and serial on the outdoor data plate tell us the age, the product line and whether factory warranty is still live, and we check registration status before quoting any major repair, because an in-warranty part changes the economics considerably. On mini-splits especially, a fair share of what we find is the original installation, not the equipment: line set flares, drainage pitch, refrigerant charge. We fix the fault we find.

Yes, and the window is short. Most manufacturers require registration within roughly 60 to 90 days of installation, and missing it typically drops coverage to a much shorter base term. Trane enforces a tighter window than most, and Mitsubishi extends coverage only when a certified contractor does the install, so who did the work has a dollar value attached. We register the systems we install and confirm it. If someone else installed yours, check before you assume: the warranty page explains how to check using the model and serial number.

Once a year inland, twice a year within a mile or two of salt water. A system here runs roughly eight months, so it accumulates about twice the operating hours of the same equipment in a northern state, and the spring visit gets the condenser coil clean and the condensate drain clear before that load arrives. On the coast the second visit is the one that matters, because salt attacks the coil year-round whether the system is running or not, and a fall rinse interrupts the corrosion before it costs you capacity.

The work that prevents August failures. The condenser coil gets cleaned so the system can reject heat, the condensate drain gets cleared and the float switch tested, refrigerant charge is verified against the manufacturer specification, and the capacitor gets measured with a meter, because a weak capacitor is one of the most common summer breakdowns here. Filters, electrical connections and temperature split round it out. If a reading is drifting, you hear about it while it is still a cheap fix, not after it strands the compressor. Maintenance plans put both annual visits on our calendar instead of yours.

Every one to three months, and where you land in that range depends on the house. Pets, carpet and doors that open all day push you toward monthly. The check costs nothing: pull the filter and hold it up to the light, and if light barely passes through, the blower is straining against it. A loaded filter is the cheapest airflow problem you will ever get to fix.

Utility rebate programs and seasonal manufacturer promotions. Rebates come from your electric utility, and they open, close and change their efficiency thresholds year to year, so check what your provider is offering right now before you sign anything. Manufacturer promotions run on specific equipment, usually in spring and fall, and we tell you at quote time what the system we are proposing qualifies for.

Work through the cheap causes first. Check that the filter is clean, that the thermostat is set to cool and not only running the fan, and that the outdoor unit is clear of shrubs and debris. Then look at the condensate drain: if it is blocked, a float switch shuts the system down on purpose, and a dead unit with a blank thermostat is very often that, not a failure. What is left after those is usually a dirty evaporator coil or low refrigerant, and low refrigerant means a leak, since a sealed system does not consume it.

Between about 45 and 55 percent relative humidity is where a Florida house should sit. Above roughly 60 percent, mold and dust mites get the conditions they need, and the air feels warmer than the thermostat says, so people overcool to compensate and pay for it. Low humidity is rarely a problem here outside a few winter weeks, which is why we do not push humidifiers the way northern contractors do. If the house cannot hold 55 percent with the system running, the cause is usually oversized equipment or short run times, not a missing gadget.

When there is something in the ducts worth removing: visible mold growth, evidence of rodents or insects, or construction debris blocking a run. Routine cleaning on a schedule has not been shown to help a typical home, and we will tell you that instead of selling the visit. Sealing pays off more often, because a duct leaking hot attic air into the system is a bigger problem than a dusty one. If you can see debris at the registers or smell something when the blower starts, have the ducts inspected and deal with what the inspection turns up.