This one came in after hours from a homeowner in Lehigh Acres. The system was running but the house wasn't cooling the way it should, and by evening it was losing the fight against the August heat. I headed out the same night.
The diagnosis pointed to low refrigerant. The system was about two pounds short of where it needed to be, and refrigerant doesn't get used up like gas in a truck. If it's low, it went somewhere. That means a leak, and the size of the loss told me it was a slow one. Slow leaks are the tricky ones because they don't always show themselves while you're standing there with your gauges.
Here's where I could have done what a lot of companies do, which is top off the system, collect the payment, and wave goodbye knowing I'd be back next summer to sell the same pounds of refrigerant again. I don't work that way. When a leak won't show itself on the first visit, I inject a dye pack into the refrigeration system. The dye circulates with the refrigerant and slowly works its way out through the leak, wherever it is. Then I come back and trace it under a special light that makes the dye glow. The return visit is built into the price of the dye search, so the homeowner isn't paying twice to get an actual answer.
That night I added two pounds of refrigerant to bring the charge back up so the family could sleep cool, injected the dye, and scheduled the follow up for two weeks out. That's how long the dye needs to migrate to the leak point and leave its mark.
The takeaway for Lehigh Acres homeowners is this. If your AC needs refrigerant added every year, you don't have a refrigerant problem, you have a leak, and every top off is rent you're paying on a problem that never goes away. Refrigerant ran $175 a pound on this job, so two pounds a summer adds up fast against the cost of finding and fixing the leak once. If your system is losing its cool, my AC repair page for Lehigh Acres covers how I work, and if you'd rather catch these things before they turn into warm bedrooms, the True Care Club maintenance plan is $199 a year per system and gets you two inspections, a $89 member diagnostic rate, and 15% off repairs. The phone is answered 24/7 at (239) 810-2500.
True Care Air LLC | Florida License CAC1824801 | Owner-operated by Derrik Speck | Fort Myers and Southwest Florida | TrueCareAir.com