Quote:
Originally Posted by retiredguy123
I am not saying that regular maintenance does not help to diagnose some issues. But, in my opinion, regular maintenance is not worth the cost in terms of return on investment. It benefits the HVAC companies way more than the customers. The same AC systems are used around the world in countries that have worse weather conditions than The Villages, and most of those systems are never maintained. I lived in Saudi Arabia where the average daytime temperature was about 115 degrees, and they did no maintenance whatsoever. I think that spending $100 to $200 every year to have a technician spend an hour checking gauges is a waste of money. If the unit is running and I am comfortable, I'm happy. Can you provide any benefit-to-cost data to justify the cost of a regular maintenance program? I would also add that none of the HVAC companies who promote these maintenance programs offer a written guarantee of repairs or system longevity.
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Let me ask you, can you provide any benefit-to-cost data that
doesn't justify the cost of a regular maintenance program?
But I see your point. What I disagree with is when you say spending money on having a professional check your system periodically is a waste of money.
I would have to go look for studies but you can go on Youtube and see tons of videos of HVAC repairs where the homeowner did no maintenance and the results.
Regardless, you just have to look at the science and engineering on how these systems work and how they typically fail to determine whether you think preventive maintenance helps prevent a failure and or prolongs the life of your system.
We can argue over
preventing failures and I don't disagree, that's a whole other discussion but what we know for sure is depending on the maintenance you do or not, will have an effect on how long your system lasts. You can have what you think is a perfectly running unit, cooling the home just fine and have an electric bill that "looks" good but your system may not be running not as efficient as it could so you may be wasting money on excess energy exceeding the $200/year you could have spend making sure it's running efficiently. It's possible. I think out of all the discussion we have been having, this is the main point. And you can't know for sure unless you take some measurements because If your not testing, you are guessing.