AC tune-up in Hamilton.

Hamilton’s houses went up in two waves. Of the 1,592 homes in 20158, the Census counts 303 from the 1970s and 660 built since 2000. Fifty summers on, a 1970s house is rarely running its first air conditioner, but the replacement was often hooked to the copper lines, the drain and the ductwork already there. So the visit begins with those older parts inside, the filter slot, the indoor coil and how much air moves, before anybody judges the newer box outside.

An outdoor unit the builder set on one of the 386 houses from the 2000s is close to twenty years old now, or past it. At that age, keep the written findings in a drawer. Lay next spring’s beside them and you can watch a unit wear down, instead of finding out on a hot afternoon.

Electricity heats 665 of the 1,298 owner homes in 20158, and in Hamilton that’s mostly a heat pump outside. At the Purcellville weather station, 2.6 miles west-northwest of town, January alone averages close to 1,000 heating degree days, nearly as many as the station’s cooling degree days for the whole year. From January 25 to February 2, 2026, the high there stayed at or below freezing every day, and in cold like that a heat pump barely rests, flipping into defrost again and again to melt ice off its coil. The spring visit cleans that coil and looks at what the winter wore down, at the same $69 a system.

Summer storms here come in on the wind: at least thirty trees down across Hamilton on July 25, 2010, and gusts estimated at 61 knots that damaged a home’s roof on Meadowlark Drive on July 21, 2019. When one passes, look the outdoor unit over before the cooling runs: branches in the fins, a fan guard pushed in, the cabinet sitting crooked, insulation stripped off the larger copper line. Spot any of it and keep the thermostat off. Then call us after the storm; we’ll go over the whole system, with anything it needs priced in writing before it’s touched.