Air conditioner maintenance and tune-ups in Sheboygan County.

A real air conditioner tune-up covers six things: cleaning both coils, measuring the refrigerant charge against the manufacturer's target, testing the capacitor under load, clearing the condensate drain and testing its float switch, checking and tightening the electrical connections, and measuring airflow across the indoor coil. Anything that stops at a filter change and a visual look is an inspection, not a tune-up.

Once a year, before the cooling season. Manufacturers generally require annual professional maintenance as a condition of keeping the equipment warranty intact, and it is worth checking your paperwork on that point. If the same outdoor unit is a heat pump and therefore runs year round, it wants servicing twice a year, once for heating and once for cooling.

April and May, before the first genuinely hot week. The schedule is open, the weather is workable, and anything we find is still a small problem with time to order a part. By the second week of a heat wave every HVAC company in the county is running no-cooling calls, and a maintenance visit is competing with people who have no air conditioning at all.

It does two things, and only one of them is a bill reduction. A clean coil and a correct charge mean the system reaches temperature with less run time, which shows on the electric bill in a hot summer. The larger saving is in what does not happen: a capacitor replaced in April instead of a no-cooling call in July, a condensate drain cleared instead of water on the basement floor, a compressor that lasts its full life instead of running hot for five years.

You can and should keep it clear. Cut the power at the disconnect, pull leaves and grass out of the base, keep shrubs and fencing about two feet back, and rinse the outside of the fins gently from the inside out with a garden hose, never a pressure washer, which bends fins flat and makes things worse. What you cannot do at home is clean the full depth of the coil, which needs a proper coil cleaner and is where most of the restriction actually sits.

Yes, because air conditioners do not degrade in a way you notice. Capacity falls gradually as coils foul and charge drifts, and the system compensates by running longer, so the house stays comfortable and the only evidence is a bill you attribute to the weather. By the time you can feel the difference, the compressor has usually been working hard for several seasons.

The checklist is the same either way, so the value of the Comfort Club, our maintenance plan, is the reminder and the price rather than a different standard of work. We contact you every year instead of you having to remember, a furnace and air conditioner tune-up costs $10 less, and there is nothing to sign. Here is how the Comfort Club works.