jayc428 t1_it54yy7 wrote on October 21, 2022 at 12:27 AM

Lol guy telling you a thermocouple is $500 is crazy. A thermocouple costs about $10-20, takes about 5 minutes to put replace. Of course people need to make money, even if the labor was $150 for travel, etc, and they marked up the material to $50, its $200 at the absolute most.

Same with the capacitor, it’s a $10-20 part. Blower fan assembly is a couple hundred bucks for a brand new one.

People are trying to pillage on prices because they can in the current market.

Taking a guess at the tonnage of your AC unit, the replacement cost like for like should be about $9-10k range. The equipment and materials is about $3000-6000 depending on sizes, two guys for the day is about $1000 in labor, $6k costs, 50% markup. $9-10kish.

TheRealThordic t1_it5a7mc wrote on October 21, 2022 at 1:05 AM

That thermocouple quote is a red flag for sure. They are like $10 at any hardware store and take a few minutes to swap out. Not to mention a burnt thermocouple on it's own shouldn't cause any issues I'm aware of besides occasionally turning off the gas supply by accident and forcing you to relight the pilot.

jayc428 t1_it5m97w wrote on October 21, 2022 at 2:34 AM

Exactly right. A thermocouple with a lot carbon build up may not make 100% of the time but they’re pretty robust, they’re always blackened a bit since they live inside a flame.