HVAC Planned Maintenance Agreements Pay Off in the Long Run

It is easy to forget about your Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system until it is not keeping your environment as comfortable as it should. If you live in Atlanta, this can be a real problem in the hot and humid summer. Planned maintenance can help your Atlanta HVAC system to keep you reliably comfortable during the summer and operate optimally all year around.

You should really plan on at least two inspections of your HVAC equipment each year. One inspection should be during the spring, when temperatures are moderate, to check the air conditioning system. The other should be in the fall to check the heating and humidifier system before the weather gets cold.

You can usually save money by entering into a planned maintenance agreement with your Atlanta HVAC service company. They will very likely give you a special rate to perform planned service because it helps the service company in many ways. This allows the service company to keep their technicians busy when temperatures are moderate and they are not getting as many emergency calls. It also helps to reduce the number of emergency calls from customers because their properly maintained HVAC equipment operates more reliably. If you were to call once in the spring and once in the fall for a checkup, you would get the same benefit, but it would likely cost more for you to pay the regular hourly rate for service than if you performed planned maintenance.

Some less scrupulous HVAC service companies will promote planned maintenance just to get a foot in the door so they can "find" reasons to sell you service or equipment. Their technicians are given a commission for getting you to buy products and service. For this reason, you want to select an HVAC service company that does not offer a commission to their technicians. You also want a company that allows their technicians to take the time they need to do a thorough job and doesn't place a set limit on the time for a technician to do planned inspection and maintenance on your HVAC system. If you are paying an agreed-upon amount for planned maintenance, it is worth it for a quality company to allow their technicians to do a thorough job, because it costs them more to have them return to take care of something they might have missed.

It also helps your HVAC service company to know the details of your system, so if there is ever a problem they can keep a proper inventory of parts and supplies on hand for their customers' systems-they'll be ready to provide solutions at a moment's notice if problems do arise. To this end, you should receive a complete written report showing a checklist of what was inspected on your system and any maintenance performed. This is the same information the HVAC service company would have to keep on hand anyway for their own benefit.

By following these guidelines, you will be able to identify just the kind of HVAC service company you want doing planned maintenance on your system. And, by having planned maintenance performed, your HVAC system will last longer and operate more reliably.