Air conditioner installation and replacement

Installation and replacement are the same job to us — the only difference is whether something has to come out first. On a replacement we recover the old refrigerant properly, disconnect and remove the condenser and the indoor coil, and see what the previous installer left behind. In this valley that's often an undersized line-set, a disconnect that isn't to code, or a slab that has sunk two inches at one corner. On a new install we're starting clean, but the questions are the same ones.

The first is always size. There's a persistent belief that a bigger air conditioner cools better, and the opposite is true. An oversized system satisfies the thermostat quickly, shuts off, and never runs long enough to pull moisture out of the air, so the house feels clammy and the equipment wears out from short-cycling. We run a load calculation off the actual house — square footage, insulation, window area and orientation, ceiling height, how leaky the place is — rather than reading the tonnage off whatever was there before.

Ductwork is the thing people forget to ask about, and it matters. New equipment attached to leaky or undersized ducts throws away a good chunk of what you just paid for, and in houses with ductwork running through an unconditioned attic or crawlspace it can be a lot. We look at the duct system before quoting and tell you honestly whether it needs attention. If it does, we price it separately so you can see what you're buying rather than having it buried in one number.

The other is the indoor coil. If you're replacing an outdoor condenser, the coil almost always needs to go with it — they're a matched set, matched for capacity, refrigerant and the metering device. Pairing a new high-efficiency condenser with a twenty-year-old coil gives you neither the rated efficiency nor a valid warranty. Anyone quoting an outdoor unit alone at a suspiciously good price is usually leaving that out.

Local housing decides half of every quote. The Road 68 corridor and Hansen Park in Kennewick were built out together through the 2000s, so their original systems are aging out together — a lot of what we replace right now is 2005-vintage equipment on exactly those streets. Alphabet-house Richland needs the ductwork conversation before the tonnage conversation. And in Broadmoor or Badger Mountain South the existing unit is often still under the manufacturer's warranty, which we check before quoting you anything.