Diagnosing the Failed Evaporator Coil
Liberty Air and Electric got the call when cooling dropped at the property mid-day. Light commercial space, rooftop Lennox package unit, business operating, hot afternoon. The kind of call where every hour the unit's down costs the customer real money.
We climbed up. First check on a leak suspect is always visual. Oil traces showed up at a joint on the line set. Refrigerant carries trace lubricant, and oil residue at a joint usually means refrigerant has been escaping there too. Sniffer (electronic leak detector) confirmed it. Failed evap coil, slow loss over time.
Same diagnostic playbook we use on residential AC repair calls. Visual first, electronic second, refrigerant pressures third. Commercial just adds rooftop access, recovery requirements, and warranty math on top.
Replacing the Coil on the Lennox Package Unit
A Liberty Air and Electric technician recovered the remaining refrigerant safely. Federal regs require recovery on commercial work, not venting, and we run by the book.
Pulled the failed evap coil out of the package unit. Drove to Lennox Stores in Orlando for the replacement. The coil for this specific Lennox model is a specialty part, not something we keep on the truck. Lennox Stores is one of our regular partner distributors in metro Orlando, and they had it in stock. Quick pickup, back on site.
New coil installed. Replaced the filter drier on the refrigerant side, which is standard practice anytime the sealed system gets opened. The drier removes moisture and contaminants from the refrigerant. Once it's been exposed to atmosphere during a coil swap, the existing one is no longer reliable. New drier means a clean restart.
Swapped the air filter while we were at it. The old one had been in long enough. Pressure tested for leaks at the new connections. Recharged to spec. Verified operation before we left.
Repair vs. Replace on a Commercial Package Unit
Three decisions worth flagging on this one.
Repair vs replace. The unit was relatively new and showed no other worry signs. Single isolated failure, otherwise running fine. That made the math simple: pay for the coil, get back to operating. If the unit had been older or showing other failure patterns (multiple recent service calls, weak performance across the board, refrigerant work coming up repeatedly), the conversation would have shifted toward AC replacement. On commercial AC, the repair-vs-replace decision is more about projected service-call frequency and downtime risk than the dollar math on any single repair.
Out-of-warranty repair. Commercial warranties are shorter than residential. Usually 1-2 years on labor and 5 years on parts versus the 10 standard on residential. This unit was past its parts coverage window. Total repair landed in the $4,000-$5,000 range. With parts warranty intact, the same repair would have run roughly half that. The difference is essentially what the new coil cost out of pocket. Worth knowing if you're buying or maintaining commercial equipment: extended warranties on the commercial side often pencil out faster than they do on residential.
No crane. Rooftop access on this property had a workable path up. We rigged a pulley and hauled the new coil up by hand, brought the old one down the same way. A crane rental for this kind of job runs $1,000-$2,000+ depending on the day, plus the time hold for the operator. We don't book a crane unless the path genuinely requires it. On this one, the customer kept that money.
Same-Day Commercial Cooling Restored
System back to spec. Cooling restored, refrigerant charge correct, no leaks at the new connections. Customer was operating again the same afternoon. No follow-up issues since.
The repair was more expensive than it needed to be, just because the warranty had aged out. But the bigger pieces of the job, the labor on rooftop access, the recovery, the brazing, the filter drier swap, the pressure test, the recharge, those numbers we kept honest. No crane invoice. No surprise add-ons.
Commercial AC Repair Across Wedgefield and Greater Orlando
Commercial AC work in Greater Orlando depends on supply chain access nearly as much as it depends on tech skill. When a rooftop unit fails on a hot afternoon, "we can have the part in two days" is not a useful answer. The customer wants the air back today, and the only way to deliver that on commercial equipment is to be plugged into the local distributor network.
We work with Lennox Stores in Orlando plus other regional partner distributors for Carrier, Trane, and other brands. Specialty parts for commercial Lennox, Carrier, and Trane equipment usually means a same-day pickup from one of these locations. That's what kept this job on a same-day timeline.
If you're running a commercial property with rooftop or split-system AC, a contractor's distributor relationships matter. It's the difference between same-day service and a multi-day outage during peak business hours. The same playbook runs on the residential side across our Wedgefield service area and the rest of East Orange County. Different equipment scale, same fast-access logic.
