Comfort Masters Heating and Cooling

Home
Comfort Masters Heating and Cooling

He's not afraid to think out of the box and find creative solutions.

Comfort Masters Heating and Cooling is owned and operated by Alex Todd who has been in the HVAC business for 17 years as a native born local to Little River and North Myrtle Beach. Comfort Masters Heating and Cooling is owned and operated by Alex Todd who has been in the HVAC business for 19 years as a native born local to Little River and North Myrtle Beach.

07/09/2026

See the vent hood in the wall right next to this condenser. That is the dryer, and it is pointed at the coil.

Every load of laundry pushes warm, damp, lint-carrying air across those fins. It does not cause a problem in week one. Over a couple of seasons the lint mats down into the coil, airflow drops, and the unit stops rejecting heat the way it should.

What the homeowner reports is that the AC "is not as strong as it used to be." Nothing is broken. No part has failed. The coil is just wearing a sweater, and no thermostat setting will fix it.

We set this unit with the coil turned away from the vent discharge and left enough room on that side to pull the fins clean during maintenance. Placement fixes what maintenance would otherwise have to fight every year.

While we are on it, we do dryer vent cleaning as well, and a blocked dryer vent is a fire risk on its own, separate from anything HVAC.

(843) 443-7186 · comfortmastersheatingandcooling.com

03/09/2026

Most condensers on the Grand Strand live in a narrow side yard like this one, and that is where a lot of them slowly suffocate.

Look at the situation. Hedge on one side, deck skirt on the other, fence beyond that. On day one the clearance was fine. Then the shrub grows six inches a year, nobody notices, and five years later the unit is in a box.

It does not fail. That is the frustrating part. It just runs hot, because the hot discharge air coming off the top and sides has nowhere to go and some of it gets pulled straight back through the coil. Higher head pressure, more amp draw, less capacity, shorter life. The homeowner's power bill drifts up and nobody connects it to a shrub.

The rule of thumb we give people: about two feet clear on all sides, about five feet clear above. Practical version, if you cannot comfortably walk around it with a garden hose, it is too tight.

We will tell you this on a maintenance visit before it turns into a compressor.

(843) 443-7186 · comfortmastersheatingandcooling.com

01/09/2026

Set on gravel. Not on dirt, and not on mulch. That is deliberate.

Gravel drains. After one of our afternoon thunderstorms the pad is not sitting in a puddle, and the base rail of the unit is not staying damp for two days afterward while the sun works on it. Mulch and bare soil both hold water against the bottom of the cabinet, and on the coast, where there is already salt in the air working on the same metal, that is how you get visible corrosion on equipment that is only a few years old.

It is corrosion prevention for about the price of a bag of stone, decided on installation day.

The other half of this one belongs to the homeowner. Those two shrubs need roughly a foot of trim a year to hold the clearance the unit was set with. We would rather say that out loud now than write it on a service ticket in three summers when the unit is running hot and somebody is surprised.

(843) 443-7186 · comfortmastersheatingandcooling.com

29/08/2026

That gap is a return duct connection that has pulled loose at the seam, found on a second opinion with a flashlight.

Return leaks are worse than supply leaks and they get a fraction of the attention.

A leaking supply duct wastes conditioned air. That is expensive and annoying. A leaking return does something different: it means your system is pulling part of its air from somewhere other than your rooms. In most houses around here that somewhere is a crawl space, an attic or a wall cavity. Hot, humid, dusty, and in some cases holding things you would not choose to breathe.

All of that air then has to be cooled and dehumidified by a system that was never sized to handle outdoor air, which is why a house with return leakage can feel damp no matter what the thermostat says.

On the sealing method, the client's note on this photo is worth repeating: mastic works, but it works until the joint moves. It is a coating on a mechanical connection that was already marginal. Sealed foam does not have that failure mode, which is why we use it at plenum transitions.

If your house is dusty in a way that does not match how you live, this is one of the first places to look.

(843) 443-7186 · comfortmastersheatingandcooling.com

24/08/2026

This is what the Atlantic does to an air conditioner if you let it finish the job.

That is not a unit somebody disassembled. That is the cabinet corroded completely through and flaking away in layers, with the condenser coil, the copper and the wiring sitting fully open to the weather.

It is worth understanding how it gets there, because it is not sudden. Salt spray settles on the unit and collects at the bottom, where it stays damp longest.

Corrosion starts at the base rail and works upward and inward. For years the unit keeps running and nothing looks particularly alarming from the yard. By the time it looks like this, the coil and the electrical have been exposed for a long time and the system has been running inefficiently for longer.

Two things worth taking from it.

Equipment near the water does not get the service life the brochure quotes. That is not a defect and it is not a reason to buy something exotic, it is a planning fact for anyone who owns near the beach.

And the two habits that slow it down are cheap. Rinse the outdoor coil with plain fresh water monthly through cooling season, power off at the disconnect first. Have somebody put eyes on it once a year who will tell you what they see.

Replacing on your schedule costs less than replacing in July on somebody else's.

(843) 443-7186 · comfortmastersheatingandcooling.com

22/08/2026

That rusted can on the refrigerant line is a liquid line filter drier, and it should never have been mounted out there.

A drier catches moisture and debris in the refrigerant before they reach the metering device. It is a useful component. The problem is where this one went.

Two things are wrong. First, this equipment already comes with a drier inside the condenser cabinet, so this one was added on top of what was already there. Second, and this is the part that matters on the coast, it was installed outside on the exposed line set, where salt air gets at it every day of the year.

You can see the result. The body is rusted through along its whole length, and there is green corrosion on the brazed copper joint right beside it. A component that was supposed to protect the system became the most likely place for it to fail.

Installed inside, where it belonged, the same part would still be doing its job.

This is what we mean when we say coastal installs need to be designed for the coast rather than installed the way they would be three hours inland.

(843) 443-7186 · comfortmastersheatingandcooling.com

20/08/2026

This is the step that separates a good install from a fast one, and it is the step most homeowners never see because it happens after the interesting part is over.

Those gauges are not there for the photo. Once the system is set and the lines are brazed, the system gets pulled into a deep vacuum, held, and leak checked. Then it gets charged by measurement: superheat and subcooling read against the manufacturer's chart for that exact model, at the actual outdoor and indoor conditions on the day.

The alternative is charging by feel, sometimes literally by how cold the suction line feels. It is real, it is common, and it will cost you cooling capacity and compressor life without ever announcing itself as a problem.

Here is a fair question to ask any contractor after an install: what were my superheat and subcooling readings, and what did the manufacturer's chart call for. If nobody can answer that, the system was not commissioned, it was just connected.

Little River. (843) 443-7186 · comfortmastersheatingandcooling.com

15/08/2026

That is a refrigerant leak, and it is coming out of the side of the compressor.

Not a fitting. Not a joint. The compressor casing itself, corroded through from the outside by salt air.
Look at the bolts around it and the pan underneath. Same story everywhere.

This is the one that ends the repair-or-replace conversation quickly. A leak at a joint is a repair. A leak through the body of the compressor is not something you fix.

We recommend repair whenever the math supports it. Sometimes it does not.

13/08/2026

Four units on one walkway, and the new one gets the same commissioning as a single family house.

Gauges on. Superheat and subcooling verified against the manufacturer's chart. Readings written down. This label reads 14.5 to 15.2 SEER2 and 7.5 to 7.8 HSPF2.

If you own a rental or a unit in a building like this, ask whoever services it for the commissioning numbers in writing.
A system nobody verified at startup is a system nobody can troubleshoot in July.

11/08/2026

Four units on one walkway at a coastal building, and the new one got exactly the same commissioning a single family house would get.

Gauges on. Superheat and subcooling verified against the manufacturer's chart for that model. Readings written down and kept. The EnergyGuide on this one reads 14.5 to 15.2 SEER2 and 7.5 to 7.8 HSPF2.

If you own a rental or a unit in a building like this, here is the thing worth knowing. For a rental property, HVAC is not a comfort item, it is uptime. A breakdown in the second week of July is not an inconvenience, it is a cancelled booking, a refund, and a review that sits on your listing for a year.

So ask whoever services your building for the commissioning numbers in writing, and keep them. A system that was never verified at startup is a system nobody can troubleshoot efficiently later, because there is no baseline to compare against. Every future diagnosis starts from zero.

We document every job with photos and written readings, and that documentation is yours.

(843) 443-7186 · comfortmastersheatingandcooling.com

Address

Opening Hours

Monday	08:00 - 19:00
Tuesday	08:00 - 19:00
Wednesday	08:00 - 19:00
Thursday	08:00 - 19:00
Friday	08:00 - 19:00
Saturday	08:00 - 16:00

Telephone

+18434437186

Website

https://www.comfortmastersheatingandcooling.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Comfort Masters Heating and Cooling posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Comfort Masters Heating and Cooling:

Want your business to be the top-listed Contractor?

Country:

City: