GREENVILLE, N.C. (WNCT) — With these scorching temperatures outside, everyone’s doing anything they can to stay cool. Two air conditioning companies say the key to making sure you have good running A/C is to keep up the maintenance.

“First thing you can do is have maintenance, having a maintenance contract cleaning the units up, making sure that they’re operating at its full capacity,” Mark Porter, the operations manager at Advance Mechanical says. “Maintenance can not only reduce breakdowns, but it can also reduce your energy bill.”

Porter also mentions that along with getting your unit checked twice a year, keep up with changing your filters.

“The number one thing homeowners can do is change their filters. Change the filters once a month,” Porter added.

Steven Grzanka with Delcor Inc., says keeping the maintenance on your air conditioner can make it last longer.

“If they’re having their system maintenance and doing everything they can, they can last 12-15 years,” Grzanka said. “Equipment now is coming with 10-year parts warranties, so you know you’re gonna be at least keep your system running for ten years, depending if you want to keep sticking money into the labor part of it all.”

If your unit or centralized air conditioning stops working, Porter says call your local air conditioning company immediately.

“Call in as quickly as you can but a lot of people tend not to turn the unit off or try to bump the temperature down when the unit’s not cooling,” Porter said. “I would recommend not to do that, turn your unit off because if you have blocked air flow, your cooler will freeze up and then a service technician will have to de-ice that coil or wait, so that it will increase your downtime and also increase the service bill, if we have to de-ice your coil.”