Here you will find information that should help to answer some questions that you may have concerning heating and air conditioning.

I’m concerned about power surges damaging my home’s heating and cooling equipment; what can I do to help prevent this?

Just like you can buy surge protectors for devices inside your home, you can also buy surge protectors for items outside your home.  James River Air Conditioning installs several varieties of surge protection equipment, including ones that product your outdoor heat pump / air conditioning units.  We can also install a whole-house model that protects everything in your home.

My outdoor unit has got frost on it, or looks frozen. Is something wrong with it?

We get this question a lot when the weather is colder.  Frost on your outdoor unit is, in many cases, totally normal!  Heat pumps have a defrost cycle that periodically melts frost and ice when it’s operating in cold weather.  If the frost doesn’t disappear, or a thick layer of ice builds up, there could be a problem with the defrost operations of your unit, so give us a call.  Remember, safety first!  Never try to chip away at ice that’s built up on your unit!  You could damage your unit or hurt yourself.

Why does my new unit make a different noise than the old unit I put in 20 years ago? We thought the new unit would be quieter than the old unit?

While the newer scroll variety of compressors are much more efficient than compressors of the past, they are also, unfortunately, noisier!  There are some solutions for making them quieter, like compressor sound blankets, but in general you can expect a new outdoor unit to be louder than your old one.