To Upgrade or Not

I have many customers that have older ac units that work great, but are beginning to become outdated. Many of them work perfectly fine and really don't need to be replaced. With the new air conditioners on the market, they are more efficient, yes, but should i recommend to my customers a new unit? Some of my clients I know simply cannot afford to upgrade the system that they have (and since it was built when air conditioners were built like tanks, will probably last another 20-30 years). Most of my customers really can't see the advantage of completely removing a old system to install a new one, mainly due to the costs. So what do you do? Do you recommend that people with older systems upgrade? or do you do what I do and recommend ways to make the existing unit more efficient? When older models need repair, I always try to find parts that are more efficient than what broke, if possible.

 

Personally, as long as my unit was problem free, you would likely not be able to talk me into replacing it. That said, when it broke, you might easily convince me replacing makes more sense that repairing due to the age of the equipment.

 

And that's the problem I'm facing. But even then, when the system works good, and its not a major repair, its still cheaper to do repair parts than replace an entire system. I've replaced a few entirely because the repair cost was so high that a new system would have been more cost effective.

 

My opinion only...

On units that are over 15 years old...

1. If the problem is electrical, fix it
2. If the problem is refrigerant related or the compressor has failed, replace it