Questions to Ask an Air Conditioning Contractor

Anyone who has ever moved into a new home or built a house from scratch knows that dealing with contractors can take over your life. If you worked with an air conditioning contractor in the past, you may have found yourself struggling to come up with questions to ask before that installation takes place. Thankfully the experts in the HVAC industry tend to agree about what's most important in this process.

Probably the first question to ask any air conditioning contractor is what kind of energy rating you're working with. The cost of cooling homes has only grown over the last few years, and today countless homeowners find themselves staggered by each month's bill. Savvy architectural features and green installation approaches may literally shave hundreds of dollars off your annual climate control tab, so do not hesitate to find out what steps are being taken and the projected cost of each.

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After energy, the most important question for an air conditioning contractor relates to the maintenance of that unit. Too many homeowners nowadays forget about such procedures entirely, rendering pricey AC units effectively worthless within a few years. Air conditioning contractors with considerable experience in home upkeep should be able to point you toward better resources in this area. Often all it takes is a few replacement filters and some very basic management to keep your home cool and dry.

Of course the greatest challenge for any air conditioning contractor is keeping all those vents beautiful and clean. Technicians with integrity will usually sign a waiver sharing liability for the condition of your home, as the last thing you want is for an otherwise successful job to set you back thousands because of botched installation. Ask your air conditioning contractor this question early if you want to enjoy peace of mind throughout the process.

Finally you may want to nail down a timeline for the work. The demands placed on air conditioning contractors can make it expensive to keep technicians around longer than necessary, so try and bracket all that labor to the day if you can. Overflow is a necessary evil of this business, but that doesn't mean you should tolerate days or even weeks without a hard-working professional in your home.

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