AC Repair in Chicago, IL
Air conditioners here run from June through August. If yours quits, tell us what it's doing and a licensed contractor who covers Cook County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Three months of hard summer heat, plus what the storms leave behind
Cook County only asks your air conditioner to work June through August, but it works hard those three months. Afternoons average 82°F, and the unit runs long hours to keep up. That kind of steady load wears on the compressor and the fan motor, the parts that never get a break once the temperature climbs.
The other thing this area does to a system is throw weather at it. Ten years of records show 171 hail events and 548 damaging wind events, with hailstones as big as 2.75 inches. That kind of hail bends the thin aluminum fins on your outdoor coil, and wind can rock the unit hard enough to loosen its electrical connections. You notice it as an air conditioner that suddenly cools less well, or one that trips off and won't restart.
- 3 months
- June through August, your air conditioner is on duty
- 82°F
- the average summer afternoon it cools against
- 171 hail events
- in ten years, and hail bends the fins on outdoor coils
- 548 wind events
- in ten years, and wind drives debris into outdoor units
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
A new air conditioner would save little on running costs in Cook County, so the repair decision comes down to the unit's condition.
Estimates for a typical Cook County home, compared with an older unit built to the previous federal minimum, from EIA household energy data, Illinois fuel prices and NOAA climate normals. Your home will differ.
Repair makes sense when a part like a capacitor or contactor has failed.
Replacement makes sense when the compressor has failed or the system uses R-22 refrigerant, which is no longer made.
In Illinois, HVAC licensing for homes is left to the cities and towns.
Cook County is one of the places in Illinois that sets its own rule for HVAC work, so whether a contractor needs a local license depends on the municipality your house sits in. Some towns require one, some don't, and the county itself may have its own registration on top of that. There's no state board keeping a single record of who's qualified, so what protection exists is whatever the local building department decided to put in place.
For an air conditioner repair, the part that's federally regulated no matter what town you're in is the refrigerant. Any technician who opens the sealed side of your AC to recover or recharge refrigerant has to hold an EPA Section 608 certification. That's not a local license and it doesn't test general repair skill, it's a federal card that says they're allowed to handle the refrigerant without venting it into the air. Whether anything else about the job gets checked comes down to what your city or the county requires.
Source: Illinois General Assembly
- Why is my AC not blowing cold air?
- Most of the time the filter is dirty enough to choke off airflow, so the coil freezes and only room-temperature air makes it out. Low refrigerant from a leak does the same thing, and so does a failing compressor. Check the filter first since that's the one you can fix yourself. If the vents are blowing warm after that, a contractor needs to check the refrigerant charge and the compressor.
- Why is my AC leaking water?
- Water around your unit almost always means the condensate drain line is clogged. Algae and dust build up inside that line over a season of running, and once it backs up the water has nowhere to go but out. A frozen coil that's thawing can also puddle water, so check whether the coil was iced over first. Either way a contractor can clear the line or find what's freezing the coil.
- Why won't my AC turn on?
- Start with the thermostat, since dead batteries or a setting knocked off cool will stop the whole system cold. If the thermostat looks fine, check your breaker panel, since AC units trip breakers more than most other things in the house. If the breaker keeps tripping after you reset it, don't keep resetting it. That points to an electrical problem inside the unit that a contractor needs to find.