Heat Pump Maintenance, the Off Duty Way.
A furnace works three months a year. Your heat pump works twelve, cooling all summer and heating all winter with the same compressor. It is the hardest-working machine attached to your house, and it gets the least attention. The twice-yearly maintenance visit is what keeps that machine out of the emergency queue and off the replacement list years ahead of schedule.
Heating · Burnet & Central Texas
Twelve Months of Work Deserves Two Visits
The maintenance math on a heat pump is different from anything else in the trade, because the duty cycle is different. A Central Texas heat pump logs compressor hours in July and January alike, which roughly doubles the wear of a cooling-only system. Components age faster, small problems compound quicker, and the efficiency drift that costs you money on every bill starts earlier. Twice-a-year service, spring before cooling season and fall before heating season, is not an upsell on this machine. It is the manufacturer’s own service schedule, and skipping it is the single most common reason we replace heat pumps early.
What actually happens on the visit matters more than the visit existing. Plenty of outfits sell a maintenance plan that amounts to a filter glance and a sticker. Ours runs the real list: coils washed, refrigerant charge verified against spec, reversing valve exercised in both directions, defrost cycle forced and observed, electrical components tested under load with the readings written down, strip heat verified and measured, drain line cleared and treated, and the thermostat checked for the settings that quietly waste money on heat pumps.
Everything gets documented, numbers, never checkmarks, so your file builds a history. A capacitor reading that drifted 8 percent since spring is a part scheduled on your terms this fall instead of a dead system in February. That is the entire trick of maintenance: converting emergencies into appointments. The readings live in your file permanently, so even years from now, any tech who opens it starts from your machine’s real history instead of from zero.
Local conditions shape this work more than most homeowners expect. Our summers stack week after week of hundred-degree afternoons, which means long compressor runtimes, drain lines moving gallons of condensate a day, and electrical components living near their limits from June through September. Lake humidity keeps the corrosion clock running even in mild months, and spring pollen packs filters fast enough to choke airflow in weeks. A tech who works this exact hundred miles every day builds all of that into the heat pump maintenance call: what to check first, which parts fail early here, and which settings survive a Texas cooling season instead of merely a laboratory one.
Heating
The Twice-a-Year Checklist, For Real
This is the actual work, spelled out. If your current maintenance visit takes fifteen minutes, compare it against this list and draw your own conclusion.
- Coils cleaned properlyOutdoor coil washed, indoor coil inspected and treated. Lake-country grime and live oak pollen strangle heat transfer faster here than almost anywhere.
- Charge verified against specPressures and temperatures checked against the data plate, both modes. A machine 10 percent low on charge wastes money invisibly all year.
- Defrost cycle forced and watchedWe trigger defrost on purpose and watch it complete, because finding a bad board in October beats finding it during a January ice storm.
- Electrical tested under loadCapacitors, contactor, motor amps, all measured and recorded. Drifting readings get flagged and scheduled before they become July failures.
- Strip heat exercisedBackup heat gets tested and measured once a year on purpose, so it works the one night you need it and never runs secretly the rest of the season.
- Drain line cleared and treatedThe condensate line moves water year-round on a heat pump, so it clogs faster. Algae treatment and a real flow test keep that water off your ceiling.
Not sure this is your problem?
Call anyway. We name the likely cause on the phone for free, and if it turns out to be something small you can handle yourself, we say exactly that and save you the visit.
Why Off Duty
What the Visit Buys You
Three returns, in order of size. Efficiency: a clean, correctly charged heat pump simply uses less electricity, and on a machine that runs all year the difference shows on twelve bills, never two. Lifespan: the fleet data is boring and consistent, maintained heat pumps in this climate run 12 to 15 years, neglected ones start failing at 8. Priority: maintenance customers get first call on the schedule when the big freeze or the heat wave hits and the whole county calls at once. That last one is worth more than people think until the day it is worth everything.
We run maintenance as a straightforward twice-a-year agreement with a reminder call, so you never have to remember it. No gimmick tiers, no locked-in contracts, no discount theater. The plan exists because maintained equipment is better for you and steadier for us, which is the rare deal that is honestly good for both sides of it.
Here is how the visit goes. A call to (512) 925-3090 reaches a real tech, not a call center, at any hour. On site, the diagnosis runs on instruments until the cause is certain, and then everything gets laid out in plain English: what failed, what fixes it, and exactly what it costs, before work begins. When the heat pump maintenance work is done, it gets verified under load instead of switched on and waved at. If the pattern sounds simple, it is. It is also rare enough in this trade that people write reviews about it.
Money talk, handled the Burnet way: we say the price before the work, every time. The trip cost comes over the phone before we roll, the repair quote comes after diagnosis and before a single part goes in, and if the smart move is to not spend money at all, you will hear that too. Fair pricing shows up in every review we have because it is policy, not luck.
One honest note about timing. Problems in this category rarely improve on their own, and the price of waiting is usually a bigger bill: the weak part takes a healthy one with it, the small leak becomes a stain on a ceiling, the strange noise becomes a seized motor. Calling early is almost always the cheaper version of the same repair, and the phone consult costs nothing: describe what you are seeing and we will tell you honestly whether it can wait.
As for who shows up: this is an owner-operated shop, so the tech at your door is usually Bryce himself, a second-generation HVAC man with ten years on the tools, licensed, insured, and photographed doing exactly this kind of work in the job gallery. No commissioned salesman rides along, and nobody at this company earns a bonus for talking you into more than you need.
This service runs wherever our trucks do: home base in Burnet, the Highland Lakes from Granite Shoals to Buchanan Dam, down the corridor to Round Rock and Austin, north to Killeen and Temple, and out to the sixteen-county edge at Waco, Boerne, and Fredericksburg. The whole map lives on the service areas page, with drive-time honesty built into every window we quote.
Diamond Contractor
Mitsubishi’s top ductless credential, earned with factory training.
Second Generation
Raised in the trade, ten years on the tools before the name went on a truck.
Warranty Authorized
JB and Mitsubishi warranty work: we file the claim, you skip the fight.
Open 24 Hours
A real person answers the phone at any hour, every day of the year.
The Standard
How This Work Gets Done Here
Here is the standard this work gets held to, spelled out. First, no guessing: the cause is proven with gauges, meters, and eyes on the actual equipment before a single part is recommended. Second, no padding: the fix that goes on the quote is the fix the system needs, sized and specced properly, with no mystery add-ons riding along. Third, no shortcuts: torque specs, code clearances, and manufacturer procedure all get followed even where nobody will ever look, because that is precisely where corners usually get cut.
And when it is done, it gets proven. Systems get run under real load, temperatures and pressures get checked against spec, and the numbers get recorded so the next visit starts from data instead of memory. You get the plain-English version of what was done and why, the workspace gets cleaned, and the price on the invoice is the price you heard before the work began. Hold us to all of it. Our neighbors in the reviews already do.
Heat Pump Maintenance Questions
Asked Before We Roll a Truck
The ones the phone line hears most for this service, with the answers given at full length instead of sales-brochure length.
How often does a heat pump really need service?
Twice a year, and on this machine that is the honest answer rather than the salesman’s answer. It carries both the cooling season and the heating season, so it gets serviced before each: spring for summer duty, fall for winter duty. A cooling-only AC can sometimes stretch on annual service. A heat pump that works year-round on one compressor cannot, and every manufacturer’s service literature says the same thing ours does.
What does maintenance actually prevent?
The expensive stuff, mostly. Compressors rarely die of old age around here, they die of running long hours against dirty coils, low charge, and weak start components, all of which maintenance catches. Defrost failures that ice the machine solid get caught in October instead of January. Drain clogs get cleared before the ceiling stain. And the silent one: backup strips quietly carrying the house at triple the cost, which shows up in our amp readings long before it shows up in your bill.
Is a maintenance plan worth it or a gimmick?
Depends entirely on what the visit contains, which is why this page spells our list out item by item. A plan that buys two real instrumented inspections a year, documented readings, priority scheduling, and honest heads-up on drifting parts pays for itself on the first prevented emergency call or the first year of lower bills. A plan that buys a sticker and a filter glance is a gimmick with a payment schedule. Ask any shop, including us, exactly what gets done, and expect a specific answer.
When should I book the fall visit?
October, ideally, before the first real front arrives in November. That timing catches defrost boards, sensors, and strip heat problems while the fix is a calm appointment instead of a cold-house emergency. Spring visits land best in March or April before the first hundred-degree stretch. Book both at once and we handle the reminders, which is the entire administrative burden solved in one phone call.
Will you push repairs I do not need?
No, and the documentation keeps everyone honest. Every reading goes in your file, so a recommendation comes with its number attached: this capacitor measured 9 percent under rating, here is the replacement cost now versus the likely failure timing. You see the same data we see and decide accordingly. Nobody here earns commission, and a maintenance relationship built on invented repairs would not survive its second year in a county where neighbors talk.
Related work: Heat Pump Repair · HVAC Maintenance · HVAC Tune-Up · see real jobs in the gallery
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Spring and fall, remembered for you, with the real checklist every time. Prefer to write it out? Send the form and we call you back.
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