Air Conditioning Repairs & Fault Diagnostics

A gas top-up is not a repair

Refrigerant is not consumed. A sealed system does not use gas up the way a car uses petrol. If your unit is low on refrigerant, there is a leak, and simply recharging it means you will be making the same call in another season — and paying again. We pressure-test and leak-trace first. Sometimes the leak is a loose flare that takes minutes to correct; sometimes it is a corroded coil that changes the economics entirely. Either way you get told which.

The faults we see most in this region

Blocked condensate drains causing water to run down interior walls — extremely common in Durban humidity. Corroded outdoor coils on coastal properties. Compressor and PCB damage from load-shedding surges and unstable supply. Seized fan motors and worn bearings. Failed capacitors, which are cheap and quick and are frequently misdiagnosed as a dead compressor. Dirty filters and coils, which are not a fault at all but cause perhaps a third of the "not cooling properly" calls we attend.

When we tell you not to repair

If a unit is over about twelve years old, running an obsolete refrigerant, and facing a compressor replacement, the repair often costs more than half a new inverter system that will use materially less electricity. We will say so. Our reputation in Durban North and on the North Coast is built on clients who were told the truth about an old unit, not on invoices for work that bought six more months.