AC Repair in Hot Springs, AR
Air conditioners here run from May through September. If yours quits, tell us what it's doing and a licensed contractor who covers Garland County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Five months of heat, and hail on top of it
Your AC runs from May through September here, and on a 90°F afternoon it doesn't get a break. The compressor stays under load hour after hour, and that kind of steady work is what wears out capacitors and contactors before their time. You notice it as a system that runs long and still can't quite catch up, or one that shuts off on its own on the hottest part of the day.
Garland County has also seen 57 hail events and 61 damaging wind events over the past ten years, with hail up to 4 inches. That kind of storm bends the thin aluminum fins on your outdoor unit and can knock loose the fan or the refrigerant lines running to it. After a bad storm, a unit that ran fine the day before can start blowing warm air or tripping off within minutes.
- 5 months
- May through September, your air conditioner is on duty
- 90°F
- the average summer afternoon it cools against
- 57 hail events
- in ten years, and hail bends the fins on outdoor coils
- 61 wind events
- in ten years, and wind drives debris into outdoor units
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
A new air conditioner would cut about $50 a year off cooling for a typical Garland County home.
Estimates for a typical Garland County home, compared with an older unit built to the previous federal minimum, from EIA household energy data, Arkansas fuel prices and NOAA climate normals. Your home will differ.
Repair makes sense when a part like a capacitor or contactor has failed.
Replacement makes sense when the compressor has failed or the system uses R-22 refrigerant, which is no longer made.
Arkansas requires HVAC contractors to hold a state license.
The state license is tied to the contractor, not to any single repair, so the same license that qualifies someone to work in Garland County qualifies them anywhere in Arkansas. Cities and counties here cannot layer on their own HVAC license on top of it, so there is one standard to check, not a patchwork of local rules.
For this repair, that license is what stands behind the person working on the unit. If the job involves opening the refrigerant side of the system, which most air conditioner repairs do, the technician also needs EPA Section 608 certification, a federal requirement that applies in every state regardless of what Arkansas licenses.
Source: Arkansas Department of Labor and Licensing
- Why is my AC not blowing cold air?
- Most of the time the filter is clogged and starving the system of airflow, or the refrigerant is low from a leak. A dirty filter forces the coil to work harder and it can ice over, which cuts cold air even though the blower still runs. Low refrigerant almost always means a leak somewhere in the line, not normal use, since these systems are sealed and don't consume refrigerant. With summer afternoons here hitting 90°F, a system that's low on refrigerant or short on airflow will struggle to keep up. A licensed contractor can check the charge and find where air is or isn't moving through the ducts.
- Why is my AC leaking water?
- This usually means the condensate drain line is clogged or the coil has iced over and is now melting. The drain line carries the water the coil pulls out of the air, and algae or dirt can block it over time, sending water back into the house instead of outside. A frozen coil is often caused by low airflow or low refrigerant, and once it thaws it can drip more water than the drain pan is built to handle. Either way it's worth shutting the system off until a contractor looks at it, since running it iced over can damage the compressor.
- Why won't my AC turn on?
- Check the thermostat first, since a dead battery or a setting bumped to the wrong mode is a common cause. If the thermostat looks right, the problem is likely a tripped breaker or a blown fuse at the outdoor unit. Arkansas sees its share of storms, and the 61 damaging wind events recorded here over the past ten years can trip breakers or damage outdoor electrical connections. If the breaker won't stay reset, that points to an electrical fault that a licensed contractor needs to trace before the system is turned back on.