Twice a year: cooling service in spring, heating service in fall. That cadence is not arbitrary — it exists so each system gets checked immediately before the season that will work it hardest, while there is still time to fix what is found.
Why Spring and Fall Specifically
Service your air conditioner in March and a failing capacitor gets replaced on a mild day for the price of a part. Discover the same failing capacitor in August and it has already taken the compressor with it, you are without cooling in hundred-degree heat, and every HVAC company in the county is booked out two days.
The seasons are the deadline. AC maintenance belongs before the first sustained heat, and furnace maintenance before the first freeze — which in the Hill Country can arrive suddenly in November after a warm October.
Booking early also matters for availability. Everyone who waits until the weather turns is competing for the same appointment slots.
What Gets Done in Spring
The cooling visit covers refrigerant charge verification, condenser coil cleaning, evaporator coil inspection, condensate drain clearing and treatment, blower and airflow assessment, capacitor and contactor testing under load, and a temperature split measurement to confirm the system is actually performing to spec.
Charge verification deserves emphasis. A system low on refrigerant has a leak — refrigerant is not consumed. Simply adding more without finding the leak is a temporary fix that lets the compressor keep running under conditions that will eventually destroy it.
What Gets Done in Fall
The heating visit is heavily weighted toward safety on gas equipment: heat exchanger inspection, combustion analysis, venting verification, gas pressure check, and burner cleaning.
A cracked heat exchanger allows combustion gases including carbon monoxide into the air circulating through your home. It is invisible and odorless. Inspecting for it annually is the single strongest argument for fall service, independent of any efficiency benefit.
The visit also covers the igniter, flame sensor, limit switches, blower, and thermostat operation.
Heat Pumps Are the Exception
If you have a heat pump, the same equipment runs year-round rather than seasonally. That doubles the annual runtime hours compared to a separate furnace and air conditioner.
Twice-yearly service is still the schedule, but it is closer to a requirement than a recommendation. Heat pumps also need their defrost cycle and reversing valve verified, which a cooling-only checklist skips entirely.
What You Handle Between Visits
Filters are the homeowner’s job, and they matter more than any other single thing. Check monthly during heavy-use months and change when dirty rather than by the calendar — during a Hill Country summer, filters load faster than the package suggests. Options are on our air filters page.
Keep the outdoor unit clear of vegetation, and hose the coil off gently if it looks dirty. Watch for water near the indoor unit and note any new sounds.
What Maintenance Cannot Fix
Worth being straight about: a tune-up does not fix a design problem.
If your back bedroom has always been warm, that is duct design or insulation, and no amount of maintenance changes it. Duct sealing is a separate repair with a real return, but it is not part of a tune-up.
Similarly, a system that is undersized for the house will keep struggling no matter how clean it is.
Making It Automatic
The realistic obstacle is not cost. It is remembering in March when the weather is fine.
Our Care Club maintenance plan schedules both visits, covers cooling and heating, and adds priority dispatch — which is what you actually want during the week when everyone else is waiting.
We serve Fredericksburg, Kerrville, Boerne, Comfort, Mason, and the surrounding Hill Country. Contact 72 Degrees or call (830) 240-1835.
