Life expectancy of air conditioning units

[Villafan]

Can anyone advise what the life expectancy of aircon units is? Our apartment is about 7 years old, and the aircon units appear to be on their last legs. They are apparently a fairly obsolete Samui brand and the apartment has been rented out throughout the season since new so perhaps this is about par for the course.

[tinkerman]

I think mine are about ten years old, the problem we are getting now isn't really the fault of the unit but the lack of power in the electricity to drive them.
The newer generation of units can run off a lot less power and as the power has been reduced now it may be time to re-invest in some new ones  

[nichola]

If you suddenly find your air con starting to blowing warm as opposed to the ice cold air you are expecting it is due to the sudden surges in electricity usage that can't be managed by the grid (as Andy says).

We thought our fairly new and powerful air cons weren't working and Doğan went to the air con shop to see if an engineer could come out and this is what he told him.

There do appear to be common times of the day for this to happen, usually for us it is late afternoon.

[busybee]

Funny enough one of our aircons was blowing out warm air last night and thought it was power surge related but the same this morning.  Bayram has just been round, needed new part and re-gassed, ours are 7yrs old.

[quackers]

Our aırcon unıt ıs 6 weeks old and suffers from power surges ıt turns to fan only durıng a power down then returns to cool when the power returns to normal. The surges affect our TV as well ıt turns ıtself off. The joys of living in Turkey.

[quackers]

Our other unıts are nearly 6 years old and had them servıced thıs year, but we clean the fılters ourselves. They work very well.

[tinkerman]

We had ours fully serviced last week and the problem remains.

[nichola]

How do you know when the gas thing runs out/needs changing?

[stoop]

Usually if they won't blow cold air Nichloa.  Just had the same problem with my car. Suddenly stopped getting ice cold air and has been in the Ford dealers today to get a full test for leaks and a re-gas. Freezing now  

[savoyboy]

Sound like time for new ones,think about inverter air con,a lot more economical .