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Polar Express HVAC & Refrigeration

Commercial HVAC

Rooftop units, splits, and a building full of people waiting.

Polar Express provides commercial AC repair across the San Antonio metro, with 24/7 emergency dispatch and same-day service on most repair calls. One flat-rate price is approved in writing before work begins for business rooftop units, commercial splits, belts, controls, and economizers. TDLR license TACLA00127982C.

A commercial cooling failure is a payroll problem before it is a comfort problem. One licensed crew covers the building and the refrigeration inside it.

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  • Licensed TACLA00127982C
  • Since 2023
  • 4.9 Google rating

24/7 emergency dispatch

Call now. A person answers.

Any hour, any day of the year, including holidays. Tell us what the equipment is reading and we will tell you what to do with the product while a technician is on the way.

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Flat-rate price approved before any work starts, on emergency calls the same as on scheduled ones.

When commercial cooling fails, the cost is not measured in comfort. A retail floor at 84 degrees empties out, an office sends people home, a church cancels, and a warehouse crew slows down whether anybody admits it or not. Polar Express services commercial cooling across the San Antonio metro on packaged rooftop units, commercial split systems, and ductless equipment in server closets and offices, for buildings that mostly never chose their own equipment and inherited it from a previous tenant. The same crew works the commercial refrigeration in the building, which for a restaurant, a convenience store, or a grocery means the rooftop unit over the dining room and the walk-in behind the kitchen are one phone call and one invoice instead of two vendors pointing at each other.

What we handle

Commercial Cooling 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.

  • Packaged rooftop units

    Compressors, economizers, belts and bearings, contactors, and the control boards on the RTUs sitting over most of the commercial space in this city.

  • Commercial split systems

    Larger split equipment serving offices, suites, and light industrial space, including systems divided between a mechanical room and a roof.

  • Airflow, belts, and economizers

    Belt drives, sheaves, and bearings, plus the outside-air damper that either saves money on a mild morning or hangs open and costs you money all summer long.

  • Scheduled commercial maintenance

    Filter intervals, coil cleaning, belt inspection, and readings taken on a calendar you set, with the report going to whoever manages the property.

  • After-hours and weekend dispatch

    A failure on a Saturday at a restaurant or a Sunday at a church reaches the same around-the-clock line the refrigeration side runs on.

  • Equipment replacement and curb work

    Unit replacements, curb adapters, and honest repair-or-replace math on a rooftop unit that has started stacking service invoices.

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.

  • One zone in the building is always wrong

    A suite running hot while the rest of the floor is fine is usually a damper, a failed zone control, or a rooftop unit serving more area than it was ever sized for. Turning the whole building colder to fix one room is how an energy budget gets spent for nothing.

  • The unit runs constantly and never satisfies

    A rooftop unit that cannot catch up on a hot afternoon is fighting a fouled condenser coil, a low charge, a slipping belt, or an economizer damper stuck open and feeding 100 degree outside air straight into the return.

  • Nobody knows what is actually on the roof

    Property changes hands, tenants turn over, and the equipment list disappears with them. Getting an accurate inventory of what is up there, how old it is, and what condition it is in is the first step toward not being surprised by it.

  • Filters get changed when somebody remembers

    Commercial filters load up faster than residential ones and there are usually more of them. Unchanged filters raise static pressure, ice coils, and shorten motor life, and they remain the cheapest line item in any building.

  • The same unit has been repaired three times this year

    Repeat failures on one piece of rooftop equipment are the unit telling you its remaining life is short. That belongs in a planning conversation during the shoulder season rather than in another emergency during a July lunch rush.

What it costs

You approve the price before the work starts.

Commercial work gets quoted per unit and per scope, because a belt and a compressor changeout on a twenty-year-old rooftop unit have almost nothing in common. A technician diagnoses the equipment, tells you plainly what failed, and hands you a flat-rate figure that you sign off on before the repair starts, exactly as the residential side works. For property managers and multi-unit sites we will also put the equipment inventory and a maintenance schedule in writing, so the annual number becomes something you can budget against instead of a run of surprises. When a unit is genuinely past being worth repairing, we say so and show you the comparison.

Request a quote

What moves the number

  • The type and tonnage of the equipment, and whether it is packaged or split
  • Roof access, including whether a lift or an additional technician is required
  • What failed, and whether the part is common or specific to that manufacturer
  • How many units are at the site and whether they can be covered on one trip
  • Whether the work happens during business hours or after the building closes
  • Whether the site carries a maintenance agreement with a defined repair rate

How the job runs

What happens between your call and a working system.

  1. Step 1

    Understand the building first

    How the space is used, which areas are occupied when, and what a failure genuinely costs you. A restaurant, a church, and a warehouse have completely different tolerances, and the dispatch order should reflect that.

  2. Step 2

    Inventory, then diagnose

    What is on the roof, how old it is, what it serves, and what is wrong with it today. Buildings that have changed hands often have no record of any of that, and rebuilding it is worth the hour it takes.

  3. Step 3

    Quote flat rate, then repair

    One number for the fix, approved before the work begins. Common motors, belts, contactors, and controls ride with the technician, and heavier parts get sourced against a timeline you receive in writing.

  4. Step 4

    Schedule around the business

    Work that can wait for a closed building gets done in a closed building. Anything that cannot is planned so the disruption lands where it costs you the least.

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.

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Yes. Packaged rooftop units are the most common commercial cooling equipment in San Antonio, and Polar Express repairs, maintains, and replaces them across every major manufacturer. That covers compressors, condenser and evaporator fan assemblies, belts and bearings, economizers, contactors and control boards, and the curb work involved when a unit finally has to come off the roof.

That is the reason a lot of San Antonio restaurants and stores call us in the first place. Polar Express is licensed for commercial HVAC and runs commercial refrigeration as a core service line, so the rooftop unit over the dining room and the walk-in cooler behind the kitchen are the same visit, the same technician, and the same invoice. It also means neither trade gets to blame the other.

Yes, and for most commercial sites that is the right way to schedule it. Repairs that do not put anything at risk get planned for after hours or before opening so the business keeps running. Emergencies reach the around-the-clock line at any hour, and we will tell you honestly on that call whether what you are describing can safely wait for a planned visit.

Filter changes on an interval matched to the building, condenser and evaporator coil cleaning, belt and bearing inspection, electrical connections checked and tightened, economizer operation verified, drain pans and lines cleared, and readings recorded each visit. Those recorded readings are the part that pays for itself, because they turn a slow decline into something visible months before it becomes a failure.

Yes, and it works best when the relationship starts with an inventory rather than with a contract. Walking each site, listing the equipment, noting age and condition, and flagging whatever is already failing gives you a real picture before anybody commits to a schedule or a price. From there we build the visit calendar and the reporting so the annual number stops being a guess.

Polar Express provides one written flat-rate price for commercial cooling repair in San Antonio, approved before work begins. The total depends on equipment type and capacity, roof or mechanical-room access, and the failed motor, control, compressor, belt, or economizer component. Multi-unit sites can also receive an equipment inventory and maintenance scope in writing.

Polar Express offers same-day service on most commercial cooling repair calls across San Antonio and runs 24/7 emergency dispatch for nights, weekends, and holidays. The person answering the phone provides a real arrival window based on the route, building use, occupied conditions, and whether equipment or business operations are at immediate risk.

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