Homes and Money
What Boise homeowners paid for AC repair this summer
A Ledger review of 214 repair invoices found a median bill of $412. Call out after 8 p.m. and the number nearly doubles.
When the first heat wave of the summer arrived in July, Treasure Valley homeowners did what they always do: they turned the thermostat down, waited, and then started calling for help. The Ledger asked readers to send in their summer air conditioning repair invoices. Of the 214 we received from Boise, Meridian, Eagle and Garden City, the median repair bill was $412.
The spread was wide. Simple fixes such as a failed capacitor or contactor came in around $285. Refrigerant leak repairs landed near $890. Compressor replacements, the bill every homeowner dreads, started at about $2,100. Local contractors say the pattern matches what they saw on their own books, and Tallgrass Heating & Air, a Boise company that has serviced homes on the Bench and in the North End since 2011, shared its own summer figures with us for comparison.
Timing mattered as much as the fault. Invoices for calls made after 8 p.m. or on a weekend had a median of $731, compared with $378 for weekday daytime visits. Nearly one in four readers in our sample paid an after-hours premium.
“Most of the emergency calls we ran this July were for systems that had not been looked at in three or four years. A $129 tune-up in May would have caught a lot of them.”Dana Whitcomb, owner, Tallgrass Heating & Air
Whitcomb said the company schedules its busiest week of the year in late July, when same-day slots can run out by 10 a.m. Her advice to homeowners is to book maintenance before the first 90-degree week, and to ask for a written estimate before any work beyond the diagnostic visit begins.
The Ledger’s sample is not a scientific survey, and readers who send in invoices may skew toward the unusually good or unusually bad. Still, the figures give homeowners a rough yardstick. If a quote for a basic repair lands far above the $285 to $412 range, it is reasonable to ask what is driving the price, or to get a second opinion.