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- Can I do it myself?
Can I just do this bit myself?
Five jobs people ask us about, crossed with the four kinds of person who ask. What the answer actually is, how to do the ones that are yours properly, and the one situation where doing it yourself can cost more than the repair would have.
Three things that apply to every answer below
- The line is not where most companies draw it
A good deal of what gets charged for is a filter, a hose and twenty minutes, and we would rather show you than bill you for it. The genuine line is about three things: refrigerant, which needs federal certification to handle; gas, where a mistake is not an expensive mistake but a different kind; and electricity, where a capacitor holds a charge after the power is off. Everything on one side of that line is yours if you want it. Nothing on the other side is, at any level of confidence.
- Power off means at the disconnect, not at the thermostat
A thermostat stops the system calling. It does not make anything safe. The outdoor unit has its own disconnect beside it and the indoor unit has a switch or a breaker, and both want to be off before anything is opened, cleaned or touched. This is the single most common misunderstanding we meet and it is the one that hurts people.
- If it is not yours, do not work on it
Equipment in a rented home belongs to the landlord, and equipment in a leased unit usually belongs to the landlord too. Working on somebody else’s equipment can leave you paying for it, and it can complicate things later. The note below sets out what to do instead, and it is more effective than a screwdriver.
Work out whether it is yours
Pick the job and pick who is asking. Every answer below is on this page whether you pick anything or not — the picker only narrows it down.
We understand exactly why this page is being read by tenants, and the honest answer is not the one that sounds most helpful. The equipment is not yours. Work you arrange on somebody else’s equipment can end up being work you pay for, and if something goes wrong afterwards the question of who touched it last is not one you want to be answering. What actually moves things: report it in writing — email or text, so there is a date on it — describe the symptom and the effect rather than the diagnosis, say what it is doing to the home, keep every reply, and follow up in writing if nothing happens. A dated record of three ignored requests is worth more than anything you could do with tools. The one exception is a safety matter: a smell of gas or a carbon monoxide alarm is not a landlord question at all — leave the building and call the gas utility or 911 from outside, immediately, whoever owns the equipment. And what we will not do: take instructions on a landlord’s equipment without the owner’s authority, or give you legal advice about your tenancy. We are a heating and cooling contractor. For what a landlord is obliged to do, a tenant advice service or a lawyer is the right call, and there are services in this county that do it free.
Yes. Do it — and buy the size and the rating we tell you, not the highest number on the shelf.
This is the most useful thing any householder can do for their system, it costs a few dollars, and there is no reason for a contractor to be involved. The only two things worth getting right are the size, which is printed on the old one, and the rating, which is not a case of more being better.
Doing it properly
- Switch the system off at the thermostat first, so it is not drawing while the filter is out.
- Note the size printed on the edge of the old one before you throw it away. Nominal sizes are rounded, so buy the printed figure rather than measuring.
- Check the arrow. There is an airflow direction marked on the frame and it points toward the equipment, not away from it. A filter in backwards works less well and collapses sooner.
- Close the housing properly. Air will go around a filter far more happily than through it, and a door left ajar makes the filter decorative.
On the rating. A more restrictive filter captures more and costs airflow, and on a system already short of airflow that trade is real — it can freeze a coil in summer and trip a furnace in winter. What the right rating is depends on the system and on the static pressure we measured. We will write it on your sheet. If nobody has measured it, a mid-range pleated filter changed often beats a high-rated one left in for a year.
On interval: look at it monthly and change it when it looks blocked. Houses with pets, dust or construction nearby need it far more often than the box suggests.
Yes — with the power off at the disconnect, and a garden hose rather than a pressure washer.
A condenser coil packed with dust, grass clippings and cottonwood cannot reject heat, and in this valley that is a genuinely common cause of poor cooling and high bills. Rinsing it is straightforward. The two ways it goes wrong are working on it live and using too much pressure.
Doing it properly
- Kill the power at the disconnect — the box on the wall beside the unit. Pull the block or throw the switch. The thermostat is not enough.
- Clear the surroundings. Two feet of space all round and nothing growing against it. Shrubs planted for appearance are the commonest cause of a starved unit.
- Brush the loose debris off the outside of the coil, downward, with a soft brush.
- Rinse from the inside out where you can reach, with an ordinary garden hose. Spraying from outside pushes the dirt further into the fins.
- Leave the fins alone. They bend if you look at them and bent fins block airflow. A fin comb is a real tool and it is easy to do more harm than good.
- Let it dry before restoring power.
What not to do: a pressure washer, which will flatten the fins permanently; coil cleaning chemicals, which need rinsing properly and can damage the coil if left; and taking the top off, because the fan is attached to it and the wiring is not long.
Switch it off first. Then work out whether it is condensate or something else — they are different problems.
Water from a cooling system is nearly always condensate, and condensate stops when the system stops. Water that is still arriving with everything switched off is a roof, a pipe or a water heater, and it is not a heating and cooling job tonight.
What is yours here, and what is not
Yours: switching the system off at the thermostat and the breaker; putting a container under it and getting the water out of a ceiling before it spreads; emptying a drain pan that has standing water in it; and looking to see whether water is still arriving with the system off. Also photographing it before anything is moved, which costs nothing and is the evidence that always gets cleared away first.
Ours: clearing the condensate drain properly, which means finding why it blocked rather than blowing it through; replacing a failed condensate pump; and checking the float switch that is supposed to shut the system down before the pan overflows, which on a great many systems has either failed or was never fitted.
The borderline one is the drain line. Many people clear theirs with a wet vacuum at the outside termination and it often works. Two cautions: do not put anything down the line that you would not want in the pan, and if it blocks again within weeks, the blockage is not the problem — something upstream is making it, usually a dirty coil.
No. Resetting a breaker that keeps tripping is the one thing on this page not to do.
A breaker is a safety device doing its job. It trips because something is drawing more current than it should, and the causes — a failing compressor, a seized fan motor, a shorted wire, a bad contactor — are all things that get worse and some of which start fires. Resetting it repeatedly removes the protection and leaves the fault.
What to do instead, and what we will check
Reset it once. If it holds and never does it again, it was probably a surge or a one-off and you can get on with your life. If it trips a second time, leave it off and ring somebody. That is the whole rule, and there is no version of it where the third reset is a good idea.
What we check, in order: the actual current draw against what the equipment’s plate says it should be; the capacitor, which is the commonest reason a motor draws too much and is cheap; the contactor, which burns and sticks; the condition of the wiring at the disconnect and at the unit, where heat damage is visible; and whether the breaker itself has weakened, which happens and is frequently missed.
Why this one is not negotiable: a capacitor holds a charge after the power is off and can injure somebody who opens a panel expecting it to be dead. It is not a matter of confidence or of tools.
No — and not because we want the work. Handling refrigerant needs certification, and a system that is low has a leak.
Two separate reasons and either would be enough. Refrigerant handling requires federal certification under the Clean Air Act, and venting refrigerant is illegal; that is not a formality a contractor can waive. And refrigerant is not consumed — a system low on charge is leaking, so adding more without finding the leak is buying the same repair every year.
About the cans sold for this
They exist, they are sold to the public, and they are a bad idea for reasons that have nothing to do with protecting our trade. Charge is measured by weight and by superheat or subcooling against the manufacturer’s target for that model at that condition, not by a gauge on a can, and overcharging damages a compressor as reliably as undercharging does. Several of these products also contain sealants, which can contaminate the system and the recovery equipment, and a contractor who finds one is entitled to refuse the job — which leaves you worse off than before.
What we do instead: find the leak. Electronic detection, ultraviolet dye where it suits, pressure testing where it does not, and an honest answer about the repair — including the cases where the leak is in a place that makes repair a poor investment and the honest advice is to plan a replacement rather than keep charging it.
And if your system is low, the useful question is not how much it costs to fill. It is how long it took to get there, because that tells you whether you have a nuisance or a failure.
A homeowner with basic tools
Then everything marked yours on this page is genuinely yours, and none of it needs more than a screwdriver, a hose and a soft brush. Filter, outdoor unit, clear registers and returns, and noticing things early.
The most valuable thing you can add costs nothing: know where the disconnect is, where the filter is and what size it takes, and where the indoor unit’s switch is. We will show you all three on a first visit and write them on your sheet. A household that can answer those questions on the telephone gets better help faster from anybody.
The second most valuable thing is noticing change. A system that used to run for twenty minutes and now runs for an hour has changed, and that is worth a call in April rather than a breakdown in August.
A homeowner who is handy
Then you will already be doing the yours-side properly and the honest conversation is about the border, because confidence is exactly what makes this dangerous rather than what makes it safe.
The three genuine boundaries do not move for skill. Refrigerant is a certification matter, not a competence one. Gas — burners, valves, heat exchangers, flues — produces failures you cannot see and cannot smell, which is the whole problem. Capacitors hold a charge with the power off, and being careful is not the same as being insulated.
Things a capable person genuinely can take on: duct sealing with proper mastic rather than tape; adding or improving a return path between rooms; insulating attic duct runs; fitting a thermostat where the wiring already supports it; and getting the condensate termination tidy. If you want to do any of that, ring us and ask what to buy. We would rather tell you than sell you a visit.
A landlord doing your own upkeep
Then the answers above apply, with one addition that matters more than any of them: write it down. What was done, when, by whom, and what the readings were. On a property you rent out, an undocumented maintenance history is a liability — in a dispute, at a sale, and with an insurer.
Two specific points. Filters between tenancies are the cheapest thing you will ever do and the most commonly skipped; an empty week is the right time for every check on this page. And carbon monoxide alarms are not optional in California where there is a gas appliance, they have a service life, and an expired one is worse than none because it is trusted. We fit them as a matter of course.
The other thing worth knowing: we are happy to deal directly with your tenant once you have authorised it in writing, and that arrangement makes everything faster for everybody. What we cannot do is take the instruction from them without it.
A tenant whose landlord is slow
The note above is the substance, and it is worth saying again in one line: the written record is the tool, not the screwdriver.
The things you can do without touching anything that is not yours: change the filter, which benefits you immediately and which no reasonable landlord objects to; keep the outdoor unit clear of rubbish and growth; keep registers and returns unobstructed; and log the temperature in the affected room, with times and dates, over a week. That log is the single most persuasive document in this situation, and a cheap sensor costs less than an hour of anybody’s labour.
If your landlord does instruct us, we will tell you what we are there to do and what we found, in the same words we give them. We do not write one version for the owner and another for the tenant.
Where this page stops
We will show you where everything is, what size filter it takes, how to clear the outdoor unit without damaging it, and what to look at before ringing anybody. That is part of a visit and it is not charged for separately. If the answer to your call turns out to be a filter, we will tell you that and we will not invent something else.
We will not touch refrigerant without certification, work on gas without the proper checks, open live equipment, add refrigerant without finding the leak, take instructions on a landlord’s equipment without the owner’s authority, or give legal advice about a tenancy. If you smell gas or a carbon monoxide alarm sounds, leave the building and call from outside — that is the one thing on this page that does not wait for anybody, including us.