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$89 A/C Tune-Up, book before Sept 30
Polar Express HVAC & Refrigeration

Air Conditioning

The tune-up is cheap. The July breakdown is not.

Polar Express tunes up AC systems in homes across the San Antonio metro, with 24/7 emergency dispatch and same-day service on most repair calls. The $89 A/C tune-up is one flat-rate price for one residential system, new customers, through September 30, 2026, approved in writing before work begins. TDLR license TACLA00127982C.

A measured spring visit catches the weak capacitor, the clogging drain, and the fouled coil while all three are still small and nobody is sweating.

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  • Licensed TACLA00127982C
  • Since 2023
  • 4.9 Google rating

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Nothing about a maintenance visit is dramatic, which is exactly why it gets skipped. The whole value sits in what does not happen afterward: the capacitor replaced in April for a small number instead of failing at five o'clock on a Friday in July, the condensate line cleared before it backs up through a ceiling, the condenser coil washed before it spends an entire summer making the compressor work against its own rejected heat. San Antonio asks more of a cooling system than most of the country does, because the season is long, the air is wet, and the equipment rarely gets a cool night off to recover. Polar Express tunes residential systems on every brand across the metro, and the current tune-up special is $89 for a single residential system through September 30, 2026.

What we handle

AC Maintenance & Tune-Ups covers more than one failure.

The complaint that gets called in is rarely the whole job. These are the things a technician is actually looking at on this equipment.

  • Condenser and evaporator coil cleaning

    The highest-value task on the list by a distance. A coil that cannot reject heat raises head pressure, run time, and the power bill on every cooling day that follows.

  • Refrigerant charge and system pressures

    Superheat, subcooling, and temperature split measured rather than eyeballed, so a slow leak surfaces as a reading in spring instead of as a warm house in August.

  • Electrical connections and capacitors

    Capacitor values tested under load, contactor points inspected, lugs tightened, and amp draw read on both motors. This is where the summer no-cool call gets prevented.

  • Condensate drain, pan, and float switch

    The line flushed, the pan checked, and the safety switch tested. With the air handler in an attic, this is the difference between a service call and a drywall repair.

  • Filters, airflow, and static pressure

    The right filter, in the right place, on a change schedule that suits the house. Restricted airflow is the quiet cause behind frozen coils and shortened blower life.

  • A written record of the readings

    What got measured, what got corrected, and what is trending, so next spring's visit has something real to compare itself against.

Signs and causes

What you are seeing, and what usually causes it.

Read these before you call. Knowing which one matches gets the right parts on the truck, and a couple of them are worth acting on in the next ten minutes.

  • You cannot remember the last time it was serviced

    If nobody has looked at the system since the day it went in, every part that wears has been wearing at the same time. That is not an emergency. It is a system running with nobody having any idea how close anything is to the end of its life.

  • The power bill climbed and nothing else changed

    A dirty coil, a low charge, and a failing capacitor all make the same system do the same job for more electricity. The bill is frequently where one of them appears first, weeks ahead of any comfort complaint.

  • The unit is louder than it used to be

    New sounds deserve attention while they are still new. Bearings, loose panels, a fan blade out of balance, and a compressor laboring against high head pressure each announce themselves before they quit, and only one of the four is expensive.

  • The air smells musty when the system starts up

    A damp evaporator coil and a slow drain pan give growth somewhere to live, and the smell shows up at startup because that is when air first moves across it. Cleaning solves it. An air freshener taped in the return covers it up until next week.

  • The manufacturer warranty has conditions you are not meeting

    Most equipment warranties expect documented annual maintenance, and a denied claim on a five-year-old compressor is an expensive way to learn that. The paperwork from a maintenance visit is what settles that argument in your favor.

What it costs

You approve the price before the work starts.

Maintenance is the one thing in this column with a published number, because it is a defined visit rather than an unknown repair. The tune-up is $89 for a single residential system through September 30, 2026, and the full terms live on the offer page linked below. If the visit turns up something that needs fixing, that repair is quoted flat rate and approved by you separately, and nothing gets folded into a tune-up invoice without being discussed first. Homes with more than one system, or a system that has gone several years without service, take longer, and you hear that when you book rather than at the door.

Request a quoteSee the tune-up offer

What moves the number

  • How many systems are at the address, since each one is its own visit
  • How long it has been since the last service, and how much cleaning that implies
  • Whether the coil needs a deep cleaning rather than a routine wash
  • Access to the equipment, including attic clearance and roof-mounted units
  • Filters and any consumables replaced during the visit
  • Whether anything found during the tune-up becomes a separately quoted repair

How the job runs

What happens between your call and a working system.

  1. Step 1

    Booked in the shoulder season on purpose

    Spring, ahead of the first stretch of triple digits, is when a technician has time to be thorough and when a discovered problem can be scheduled instead of rushed. October is the matching window on the heating side.

  2. Step 2

    Clean first, then measure

    Readings taken on a filthy coil describe the dirt rather than the system. Cleaning happens before the gauges come out, so the numbers written on your report still mean something a year from now.

  3. Step 3

    Test the things that actually fail

    Capacitors under load, contactor points, motor amp draw, the float switch, the drain, and thermostat calibration. Every one of those is a common summer breakdown and a cheap spring correction.

  4. Step 4

    Tell you what is coming

    Anything trending toward failure gets flagged with a straight answer about how much life it likely has left. You decide whether to handle it now or watch it, and it goes in writing either way.

Questions

Straight answers, before you call.

Still not covered here? The person who answers the phone can usually settle it in a sentence, day or night.

Call (210) 376-0781

Once a year at minimum, in spring before the long cooling season starts, and twice a year for a heat pump because that equipment works in both seasons. San Antonio runs cooling equipment from roughly April into October, which is far more operating hours than the national average, and hours are what wear parts out. Systems in dusty areas, or in homes with several pets, earn the second visit too.

A real one cleans the condenser and evaporator coils, checks the refrigerant charge by measurement, tests capacitors and the contactor under load, reads amp draw on both motors, flushes the condensate drain and tests the float switch, checks airflow and the filter, verifies the thermostat, and leaves you a written record. Anything shorter is an inspection with a sticker on it. It is worth asking any contractor to name the tasks before you book.

It protects the efficiency the system was built with, which is a narrower promise than the one usually made. A clean coil, a correct charge, and unrestricted airflow let equipment do its job in the run time it was designed for, and letting any of the three slide means the same cooling costs more electricity every day. We will not attach a percentage to your house, because the honest figure depends entirely on how neglected the system was.

Part of it, and the part you can do genuinely matters. Change the filter on schedule, keep two feet of clear space around the outdoor unit, rinse the outdoor coil gently with a garden hose from the inside out with the power off, and pour a little water down the drain line to confirm it flows. Refrigerant, capacitors, and electrical connections belong to a technician, and a capacitor stays charged even after the disconnect has been pulled.

Book the visit if you will genuinely remember to book it every year. A plan earns its money when it removes the remembering, when the household has two systems to keep track of, or when priority scheduling during a heat wave matters to you. We would rather see a homeowner get one honest tune-up a year with no plan at all than carry a plan nobody ever schedules against.

The $89 A/C tune-up is one flat-rate price for one residential system, new customers, through September 30, 2026, approved in writing before work begins. It covers the defined maintenance visit for San Antonio homes; any repair found during the tune-up is priced and approved separately.

Polar Express maintains all major air conditioner brands across San Antonio, including central split systems and the controls attached to them. The visit follows the same measured checklist regardless of the badge: coils, refrigerant readings, electrical components, drains, airflow, filters, and thermostat operation. Equipment-specific requirements are added when the manufacturer calls for them.

Related services

The work that usually comes with this one.

Nearby

We run this service across the San Antonio metro. These are three of the areas we cover, and the full list lives on the service areas page.

One call, day or night.

Licensed, locally owned, and answering the phone around the clock. You get the diagnosis in plain language and the price before the work starts.

Call 24/7 · (210) 376-0781Book Service