AC Replacement in Smithville, ON — You Are Replacing Two Parts, Not Just One

You have decided to replace the air conditioner rather than repair it again. Most contractors will show you one photograph of an outdoor unit with a price beside it. That photograph shows one piece of the machine. A central air conditioner is two pieces, and the second one sits indoors, inside your furnace. This page covers which parts come out, why the furnace comes into it, what Ontario requires before the old machine leaves, and what moves the price of AC replacement in Smithville. One family has run this business since 2014, and the technicians who open a sealed system carry the 313A that Ontario requires for it.

What Gets Replaced When You Replace an Air Conditioner

Two pieces of equipment, not one machine. Natural Resources Canada, or NRCan, puts a central system in a single sentence: a compressor and an outdoor coil sit outside, “connected by refrigerant lines to an indoor coil mounted in the furnace.” (1) A replacement normally means all three.

• The outdoor unit. The box beside the house, holding the compressor and the outdoor coil.
• The indoor coil. A second coil inside the furnace cabinet, where your house air loses its heat.
• The refrigerant lines. Two pipes running between them, usually through the basement wall.

Anything a quote leaves off that list is something you still own afterwards.

The Outdoor Unit and the Indoor Coil Are Sold as a Pair

The efficiency figure printed on a new air conditioner does not belong to the outdoor unit alone. The manufacturer measures it with both halves running together. NRCan says the indoor and outdoor components “are intended to operate together, and the rated SEER is based on tests of these components working together.” (1) SEER puts a number on how much cooling you get back for the electricity used across a whole summer.

So a new outdoor unit bolted onto a coil that has sat in the furnace for fifteen years is a pairing nobody has tested. NRCan states the consequence in two places. Its instruction on a replacement is to make sure “the existing indoor coil is replaced by one matched to the new outdoor unit.” (1) Where the old coil stays, “the new unit will not deliver its rated efficiency.” (1) Asked whether both should change at once, NRCan answers yes under most circumstances, and calls an old coil on a new high-efficiency unit “an unknown SEER and probably suboptimum efficiency.” (1)

There is one question to put to any quote, then. Which coil does this include? A quote for a box and a quote for a matched pair describe different work, and they do not come to the same number.

Why the Furnace Ends Up in the Conversation

The indoor coil does not sit beside the furnace. It sits in it, in the cabinet above or below the heat exchanger, and the furnace’s own blower pushes house air across it. (1) So replacing an air conditioner means opening the furnace up, whether or not the furnace itself is being replaced.

Once it is open, the age of the furnace becomes a fair question instead of a sales pitch. A furnace with years left in it stays exactly where it is, and we change the coil above it on its own. Where the furnace is already close to the end, both jobs need the same panel off and the same duct connections opened.

That is a decision about your timing, and you are the one making it. Replacing a furnace that runs well and is not yet old buys you nothing, and we will tell you so. Where it is genuinely near the end, price that job on its own terms first. The age at which a gas furnace stops being worth repairing has its own page.

Out in West Lincoln this comes up more often than it does in town, because many of those houses had cooling added a decade or more after the furnace went in. The two halves have never been the same age.

What Happens to the Old One

The machine coming out still has refrigerant in it, and in Ontario only a certified person may take that out. The province states it plainly: a certified technician is “the only person who can remove, discharge, handle and dispose of” refrigerants, including the HFCs used in modern air conditioners. (2)

Ontario asks for two different pieces of paper here, and they are easy to mix up. An Ozone Depletion Prevention card lets somebody handle refrigerant, and it runs five years from the day it is issued. That card on its own is not enough. Ontario says “you cannot work on or fix refrigeration equipment with only an ODP certificate card”, and names the other one as a Certificate of Qualification for a refrigeration and air conditioning mechanic. (2) That second one is the 313A, and our technicians hold it.

That gives you something to ask before anybody unbolts anything. Who is taking the refrigerant out, and what are they certified to do?

What We Put In Its Place

Most of what we put in is Rheem, and we hold that company’s Pro Partner designation. That designation matters on a replacement for a practical reason. The outdoor unit and the coil have to be a matched pair, and one manufacturer’s range is the simplest place to find both halves. Weatherking is Rheem’s lower-priced line, which keeps that pairing inside one range on a tighter budget.

What Decides the Cost of an AC Replacement in Smithville

Every quote you are given will price the outdoor unit. That part has a model number and a published rating, so it is the half people compare between quotes. One quote differs from another almost entirely in the indoor half of the job.

Natural Resources Canada, writing about what a central air conditioner costs to install, names “the nature of the existing furnace” first among the things it depends on. (1) The cabinet is what the coil comes out of and goes back into, and no two are the same age, the same size, or equally easy to open.

So three things move the number on a replacement: which coil the quote includes, whether the refrigerant lines carry over, and how much work the furnace cabinet needs before a new coil will fit it. None of the three is visible from the street, which is why a figure given before anybody has opened the furnace prices only the easy half.

Around Grimsby and Beamsville an outdoor unit often sits down a side passage or behind a fence, so even the easy half is worth somebody looking at.

AC Replacement Questions From Smithville Homeowners

My air conditioner still works. Is there a reason to replace it now? Usually not, and the argument for doing it early is about you rather than the machine. Replacing while it still runs means you pick the equipment, read the quote properly and book the date around your own week. Replacing after it stops means making those same decisions in the middle of a hot spell, with the house already uncomfortable. If yours has broken rather than aged, what usually fails and whether it is worth fixing is the page to read first.

Can the new outdoor unit use the pipes that are already there? Sometimes, and it depends on their size, their material and their condition. They have to be the right diameter for the new equipment, clean inside, and able to hold a vacuum without losing it. A technician tests that rather than assuming it, and the answer moves the quote either way.

The furnace is nearly new. Does the coil still have to come out? Yes, and the furnace itself stays put. A newer furnace usually makes the job simpler, because its cabinet is built to take a coil and its blower is generally already strong enough for the air a new coil needs.

I signed a contract at my kitchen table. Can I still change my mind? Yes, for ten days. Ontario says “you always have a cooling-off period when you sign a contract in your home.” (3) In those cases you can cancel “for any reason within 10 days of receiving a written copy of the agreement.” (3) That covers any contractor you invited in, including us, and it is why nobody reputable needs you to decide on the spot.

Get a Quote for Replacing Your Air Conditioner in Smithville

Three things help before a first visit. How old the furnace under the coil is, whether the outdoor unit has ever been moved from where it started, and which rooms have never cooled properly.

We work across West Lincoln, Smithville, Beamsville and Grimsby. Where there is no old system to work from, what a first-time cooling installation involves is a different job from the one on this page. For the wider picture, start at the page covering repairs, tune-ups and mini splits together.

References

1. Natural Resources Canada, Air Conditioning Your Home, natural-resources.canada.ca
2. Government of Ontario, Certificate to handle refrigerants, ontario.ca
3. Government of Ontario, Your rights when signing or cancelling a contract, ontario.ca