$69 flat diagnostic — waived in full when you approve the repair · HVAC & appliance repair
Maryland & Virginia (571) 478-1797
AC Repair & Installation
Swift Tech LLC repairs and installs residential air conditioning across Maryland and Virginia, dispatched from Frederick, MD. Every visit starts with a $69 flat diagnostic fee, which is waived in full when you approve the repair.
$69 flat diagnostic — waived in full if you approve the repair.
Most air conditioning calls are not a dead system. They are a $30 part that failed and took the whole unit down with it — a swollen run capacitor, a pitted contactor, a condensate float switch doing exactly what it was installed to do. The difference between a cheap afternoon and a five-figure replacement quote is whether anyone actually tested the thing before writing the number down.
That is what the $69 buys. A technician arrives inside the window quoted for your area, puts meters and gauges on the system, and finds the actual fault. Then you get the finding, the repair price in writing, and a decision to make. Approve it and the $69 comes straight back off the bill. Decline it and $69 is all you owe — no work starts on a maybe.
What it is doing
Usually one of four things: the outdoor unit is not running at all (capacitor or contactor), the system is low on refrigerant because it has a leak, the indoor coil has frozen from restricted airflow, or the thermostat is calling for the wrong thing. These are not interchangeable — a system low on charge that gets topped up without finding the leak is the same call again in six weeks, at your expense.
Start with the obvious and work in: tripped breaker, a condensate float switch that has cut the circuit because the drain is blocked, a blown low-voltage fuse on the control board, a failed transformer, or a thermostat that has lost power. A full-system no-start is often the cheapest repair on this page once it is correctly identified.
A frozen evaporator coil means the coil is getting colder than it should, which is either an airflow problem or a charge problem. Before the visit, switch the thermostat from COOL to OFF and set the fan to ON. That thaws the coil without running the compressor against a block of ice, which is what actually damages equipment. Change the filter while you wait — a clogged filter is the single most common cause.
On a genuinely hot day some run time is normal. Constant running that never satisfies points at a dirty condenser coil, low charge, duct leakage dumping cooled air into an attic, or a system that was sized by matching whatever box was there before rather than by calculation.
The condensate drain is blocked, the secondary pan is filling, or the float switch has failed to cut the system. This one is worth calling on quickly — the next thing it damages is usually a ceiling.
Screeching is typically a blower or fan motor bearing. Grinding is mechanical. A hard electrical hum from the outdoor unit that does not resolve into the fan spinning is very often a failed capacitor, and running a compressor in that state is how a repair becomes a replacement.
The parts that actually fail are the ones already stocked on the van, so most air conditioning repairs are done the same day rather than scheduled for a return trip.
There is a real answer to this and it is not always the expensive one. A compressor failure on a system already past its service life, a unit still running R-22, or a third significant repair inside two seasons — those are cases where money spent on a repair is money spent twice. A capacitor on an eight-year-old system is not. Swift Tech quotes the repair and the replacement side by side and says which one it would do, including when that means a smaller invoice.
A replacement system is sized with a Manual J load calculation — square footage, orientation, insulation, window area, duct condition — rather than by matching the tonnage of the failed unit. This matters more than most homeowners are told. An oversized air conditioner satisfies the thermostat quickly and shuts off before it has run long enough to pull humidity out of the air, which is why an oversized system in a Mid-Atlantic August produces a house that is cold and clammy at the same time. Getting the size right is free at the point of installation and impossible to fix afterwards.
Asked and answered
Short answers. If yours is not here, call and ask — the phone is answered by someone who does this work.
Every area carries a written arrival window, quoted before you book. HVAC or appliance, it is the same phone call.
$69 flat diagnostic · waived on approved repair