FRESNO, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) – Air conditioning maintenance technicians like Lionel Hawkins are busy during the hottest days so far this year.
“On Monday we were doing three or four jobs a day, today we’re doing about 30,” said Hawkins, the Hawk Air owner.
Hawkins said many of these calls come from people who don’t use their air conditioner regularly throughout the year, but notice it’s not working as well during the heatwaves.
“What’s attached to it is a coil, a condenser coil. The condenser coil is the ‘nose’ breathing apparatus, so if you don’t clean that ‘nose’ coil, the unit is going to struggle,” he said.
He said smoke from wildfires regularly blows into the area, which can dirty the coils, and calling a technician to clean them can help keep your air conditioner running smoothly.
“The main issue we’re seeing right now is they’re blowing air but it’s blowing hot air, which means either the compressor is shorted out or the little capacitors are shorted out,” he said.
Another issue they’re seeing this week, Hawkins said, is that while the units themselves are working fine, the ducts used to pump air into people’s homes are damaged and in need of repair.
Hawkins also said that while attractive, lowering the temperature too much can be costly and inefficient.
“You set it to 65 degrees, it never gets to 65 degrees in the house, it just keeps running,” he said.
Hawkins also said that because so many people are using their air conditioners, those who call a technician may have to wait up to three days to receive service.
Regarding electricity, PG&E says it is working to keep power flowing and that while there are outages, the situation is not too bad at the moment.
“The good news is that this heat wave has been somewhat limited to the Central Valley, and other parts of California are experiencing less extreme temperatures, so the supply and demand situation is pretty good,” spokesman Jeff Smith said. “We knew this hot weather was coming, so we took a lot of our crews off a few days in advance to make sure all of our crews were available.”
