Residential only

Air conditioning repair & installation for Tacoma and Pierce County homes

Summers around Puget Sound used to be short enough that plenty of houses skipped cooling entirely. That has changed. When a July heat stretch settles over Tacoma, Lakewood, Puyallup, Parkland, Spanaway and University Place, an aging air conditioner that limped through last year tends to quit at the worst possible moment. The owner does the diagnosis himself, explains what he found, and recommends the repair when a repair is the right answer.

What we find on no-cool calls

Central AC diagnostics & repair

Warm air at the registers is a symptom, not a diagnosis. It can be a failed run capacitor or contactor, a tripped high-pressure switch, refrigerant charge that has slowly leaked away, a condensate drain backing up and shutting the system down, a seized condenser fan motor, or a thermostat and control problem that never touched the equipment at all. We measure pressures, temperature split, static pressure and electrical draw before saying anything about replacement.

Coils, airflow and shade

Pacific Northwest yards are hard on outdoor units — fir needles, cottonwood fluff, moss and dense shade plantings pack a condenser coil until it can't reject heat. Indoors, a filter that hasn't moved in two years or undersized return ductwork will starve the evaporator and ice it up. Both look like a dying compressor from the thermostat. Cleaning and correcting airflow is often the actual fix.

Replacement & new installation

When an air conditioner is genuinely done — compressor failure, an obsolete refrigerant, a rusted-through coil on a system well past its service life — we design the replacement around the house. That means load, existing duct capacity and static pressure, electrical service, condensate routing and where the outdoor unit can sit without cooking itself against a south wall. Oversizing is the most common mistake we inherit: it short-cycles, never pulls humidity down, and leaves upstairs bedrooms warm.

Adding cooling to a home that never had it

If your house has ductwork and a furnace, adding a cooling coil and outdoor unit is often straightforward. If it doesn't, a ductless system is usually the better build. Either way we'll tell you which one fits the house rather than defaulting to whatever is easiest to sell.

Worth knowing

Heat pumps and ductless systems cool too

A heat pump is an air conditioner that can also run in reverse. If your existing AC is failing and your furnace is aging alongside it, replacing both with a single heat pump often makes more sense than buying a cooling-only condenser and then facing the heating side again in a couple of years. For homes without ductwork, a ductless mini-split delivers real cooling to the rooms that need it without tearing the house apart. Where a gas furnace is still in good condition, a dual-fuel arrangement keeps it and adds cooling. We'll lay out the options honestly — including staying cooling-only if that's the right call for your budget this year.

Replacement and retrofit pricing follows an on-site evaluation; every home is different, so we don't publish flat prices. Projects that need substantial measurement, calculations and system design may carry a paid design or assessment fee, and eligible design fees may be credited toward the project if Dreadnought performs the installation, subject to the proposal. Permitting is handled as required for the project, and when electrical or other trades are needed we use trusted licensed, bonded and insured subcontractors.

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