Repair or Replace? Working Out Whether an Old Air Conditioner Is Worth Fixing

There is no single number where repairing stops making sense. But there are four things that decide it, and most people only ever weigh up one of them.

The four things that actually decide it

People usually compare the repair quote against the price of a new unit and stop there. That misses most of the picture.

1. What it costs to run

This is the one that gets left out, and in Darwin it is often the biggest number in the whole decision. A unit runs eight months a year here, some of them close to twelve. An old, inefficient system that runs that hard costs real money every month it stays on the wall.

A repair that keeps a power-hungry unit alive for another two years is not a saving if the running cost difference eats the gap.

2. Whether the parts still exist

On a discontinued model, the part might be available now and not in eighteen months. Fixing something today that cannot be fixed again next year is worth knowing about before you spend the money, not after.

3. What else is close behind

Units do not usually fail one component at a time in isolation. If a unit is at an age where the fan motor has gone, the capacitor and the controller are the same age and have had the same hours. Sometimes the honest answer is that you are about to start a series of repairs, not do one.

4. Whether the install itself is still any good

Sometimes the unit is fine and the installation was always the problem — undersized for the room, outdoor unit somewhere it cannot breathe, drain run the wrong way. Replacing the box does not fix any of that.

The job that says the most about how we do this

A customer needed a system replaced and had braced themselves for about fifteen thousand dollars, because that was the number they had been given elsewhere. The job came in at five.

We could have charged what they were expecting and they would never have known. We charged what it cost. Since then we have done every fan and every light in that house, powered the pool and run sub-mains to the shed. That one decision has been worth several times the difference.

That is the whole reason we tell people when something can wait.

Rough guide, and it is only a guide

Leaning towards repair:

• The unit is under about eight years old
• It is a single, identifiable fault
• Parts are current
• It has been serviced and looked after

Leaning towards replacement:

• It is over about twelve years old
• It has already had a significant repair
• The model is discontinued and parts are getting hard
• It never really cooled the room properly even when it was healthy
• It is a non-inverter unit, in which case the running cost gap is large

Between eight and twelve is the grey zone, and that is where standing in front of it matters.

Get it diagnosed before you decide

The worst version of this decision is making it on a guess. A proper diagnostic tells you what has actually failed, whether the part exists, and what shape the rest of the unit is in — and that turns a guess into a decision.