You’re probably familiar with hard starting in vehicle engines. You turn on the ignition in an old car, and the motor grunts, grumbles, and struggles before it starts. This happens more often in colder climates than ours, but everyone knows what a hard-starting engine sounds like.
An air conditioning system can also hard start, although it makes different noises. Buzzing and humming sounds from the outdoor condenser cabinet indicate the compressor in the AC is fighting to get started. An air conditioner making a general racket when it turns on is probably hard starting.
And if your home’s AC is hard starting, don’t let it continue!
Southern California recently experienced a number of powerful earthquakes, the most powerful in many years. Although we were fortunate to have experience minor damage here in Orange County, these quakes are an important reminder of how we need to be vigilant about earthquake safety and preparedness. There are many resources online to help you prepare your household for emergency situations from quakes. In this post, we want to talk specifically about earthquakes and your plumbing, since the plumbing system is one of the parts of a house most vulnerable to quake damage. 
Is this happening in your house? Tiny insects, looking something like dark dust motes, are circling around a kitchen or bathroom drain or a shower/bathtub drain. It’s not a pleasant sight, and even worse it’s not a pleasant idea that there is a source for the breeding of flies inside your home. Although these “drain flies” (moth flies) are harmless for people, you still don’t want them in your house, and you want to eliminate the source. In many cases, this jog requires a 
One of the first things we recommend people check when their air conditioning system suddenly stops working (fans, compressor, all of it) is to check the electrical panel. The circuit breaker to the air conditioning system may have tripped and cut off the electricity. Resetting the tripped breaker will restore the AC to normal working order.
Here’s the standard way central air conditioners all used to work: the air conditioned by the evaporator coil is pushed into the ventilation system by the blower fan in the air handler, sending the air to every vent in the house. On the surface, this sounds like exactly what a central AC is supposed to do.
Southern California summers are wonderful—and sometimes not so wonderful when the serious July, August, and September heat waves hit. Air conditioning systems run often during the middle of the year, and the drain they place on electricity means higher utility bills throughout the season.
eaks are what most people think of when they hear about “plumbing problems.” (Well, that and clogged drains.) Leaking faucets are wastes of water that often go without repairs for far too long. But the truly harmful leaks are pipe leaks that occur out of sight around a home, behind walls, in the ceilings, etc.
The first serious week of warm weather for the middle of the year in Southern California is a good time to watch carefully the performance of your AC. If the air conditioner is starting off with poor performance that doesn’t keep your home cooled down the way it should, you want to have the proper 
Homes in Orange County rarely need to worry about their heating systems. The weather is warm most of the year, with only an occasional cool stretch in the winter and scattered days of rain.
Air conditioning systems get to work early in the year in Southern California. Unfortunately, that means they’re also likely to start showing signs of malfunctions earlier as well—extra time for the stress to set in.