Installation & replacement in Washington DC
When the repair bill stops making sense against the age of the system. Sizing done with a load calculation, not by matching the sticker on the old unit.
- Diagnostic fee
- Quote visit free
- Typical total
- $6,000 – $14,000
- Usual response
- Quote in 1–2 days
- On site
- 1 – 2 days to install
At a glance
Labour 12 months · equipment per manufacturer
When replacement beats repair
Nobody should be talked into a new system. These are the situations where the arithmetic genuinely favours it — and if yours is not one of them, a good technician will tell you to repair.
The system is over 15 years old
Most residential equipment is designed for 15–20 years. Past that, parts get scarce and each repair buys less remaining life than the last one.
Judgement call
A repair costs more than a third of a replacement
A common rule of thumb, and a reasonable one. A $2,800 compressor on a fourteen-year-old system is money spent on something that owes you nothing.
Judgement call
It still uses R-22 refrigerant
R-22 has not been produced or imported since 2020. Recovered stock exists, at a price that makes any significant leak repair worth reconsidering.
Judgement call
The system was never the right size
Oversized equipment short-cycles, never dehumidifies, and wears out early. Common where a unit was replaced by matching the old one instead of running the numbers.
Load calculation first
Bills climbing with no change in habits
Efficiency drifts down as coils foul and compressors age. A modern high-efficiency system is a genuinely different running cost — but get the ductwork checked first, or the saving goes into the attic.
Quote per system
Adding cooling to a house that never had it
DC rowhouses and converted upper floors often have no ducts at all. Ductless mini-splits are usually the honest answer, and cost less than retrofitting ductwork into a 1910 building.
$4,000 – $12,000 typical
Before you accept any replacement quote
These four questions separate a real proposal from a number written on the back of a card.
- 01Ask for the load calculation — Manual J — in writing, not a size matched to the old unit
- 02Get the model numbers for the indoor and outdoor units, and check they are a matched pair
- 03Ask what happens to the ductwork; new equipment on leaking ducts wastes most of the upgrade
- 04Ask which permits are pulled and who pulls them — DC requires them for this work
Still not sorted?
Request in the app and a verified company usually accepts within a few minutes.
Ranges are indicative of the DC market, not quotes, and not yet drawn from completed NovaAir jobs. Your price is whatever the technician quotes for your system, and you approve it before any work starts.