Air Conditioning Repair in Friendswood, TX
Friendswood houses have a habit of growing. The sunroom, the converted garage, the primary suite on the back — each one added to a system sized for the house before it, and that is where most cooling complaints here begin.
Call 832-662-4107
A house that grew, and a system that did not
Much of Friendswood was built from the 1960s through the 1980s, on generous lots, and a great many of those houses have been added to since — a sunroom, a converted garage, a primary suite on the back.
Additions are where cooling problems start. The new room gets a duct run spliced off the nearest trunk, the system was sized for the original house, and the result is a room that never quite cools and a system that runs longer than it should to serve it.
If your added room is the one that will not cool, the answer is usually not a bigger system. It is a dedicated return, a correctly sized duct run, or a separate mini-split for that space. Replacing the whole system to solve one room is expensive and often does not solve it.
Original ductwork under mature trees
Older Friendswood houses frequently still have the ducts they were built with. Forty-year-old flex duct sags, splits at the joints and loses insulation value, and the attic it runs through in a July is brutally hot. You can lose a meaningful share of your cooling before it ever reaches a vent.
The mature tree canopy helps on the other side of the ledger — a shaded condenser runs cooler and more efficiently. The tradeoff is leaf and seed debris in the coil fins, so rinse it twice a year with a garden hose, power off, from the inside out.
Clear Creek, and equipment that has been wet
Parts of Friendswood along Clear Creek have flooded. If your outdoor unit has been in water, the coil is usually salvageable and the electrical components are the question — contactors, capacitors and the disconnect. Water that reached the electrical compartment means those parts should be replaced rather than dried and hoped for.
If you are replacing a system on a property that has flooded, ask about raising the condenser on a platform while the work is happening anyway.
Before you call
- Is it the whole house or one room? One room points at ducts, not the system.
- Was that room part of the original house? If not, say so.
- Check the filter and both breakers.
- Say if the property or the unit has ever flooded.
More on separating faults is on the AC not cooling page.Call 832-662-4107