How a Refrigerant Leak Could Ruin Your Day
Refrigerant leaks are no joke. They’re not like other leaks where you just refill them and go on with your day. The fact that the leak is occurring is a need for professional repairs all on its own. And the side effects that can come from a refrigerant leak in your air conditioner are going to be all over the place.
From higher energy bills to subpar comfort and control, you might notice a refrigerant leak from a hundred different places!
That all being said, this blog post is about avoiding bad things that might ruin your day, so let’s get on with the good news. A professional can and will fix a refrigerant leak, or at least provide you with a solution that’s going to work.
Refrigerant leaks are one of the most common AC repairs in Louisville, and we’re going to give you a rundown of them.
How Does a Refrigerant Leak Happen?
Well, this can be a complicated question since every air conditioner is going to encounter different things. Some refrigerant lines can be chewed open and broken by a critter. Others can be worn down and destroyed due to abnormal weather patterns like storms or hurricanes. You might even just get unlucky with a stone or a rock landing up against your home that was kicked by a car, the world can be a chaotic place!
The truth is that there are a thousand different ways a refrigerant leak can open up, the important thing is that it get addressed by a professional and fixed. This leak, no matter where it is in the system, is going to cause damage to your home and your comfort.
Why an AC Needs Refrigerant
Refrigerant is integral to the cooling process. Without it, your air conditioner is basically just an oversized fan.
Refrigerant is the material that condenses and evaporates over and over again in the cooling process. By evaporating, it stores heat inside of it and cools the surrounding air. Then, when it finally condenses in your condenser unit, the heat escapes out into the atmosphere where you can’t feel it. This is essentially what the cooling process is and why air conditioners are so dang good at what they do!
Detecting a Leak
Now, let’s get into the important bits. If you know how important refrigerant is, here are some of the more common ways you can detect that your system is running out.
- Hissing or Bubbling: This is the sound refrigerant can make when it’s leaking. The hissing is the noise of gaseous refrigerant escaping from the lines, while the bubbling is actually the sound of air bubbles forming inside of the lines.
- High Energy Bills: High energy bills can be a sign that your system is starting to falter and can’t easily remove heat with the current amount of refrigerant it has.
- Lukewarm Air and Poor Temperature Control: Without refrigerant, the system is going to be unable to cool the air properly, but it’s still going to blow lukewarm air through the vents as it scrambles to do its job.
Contact Fannon & Sons Heating Cooling for comprehensive AC repairs you can count on. Welcome to the Family!
