About four in ten Ashburn homes are townhouses, more than half in Loudoun Valley Estates, Moorefield and Goose Creek Village. In a three-level townhouse from the 2010s, the indoor coil and blower often hang in the attic over the top-floor bedrooms. All summer that coil wrings water out of the air, and a thin plastic line drains it. When gunk clogs the line, the water backs into the pan under the unit, right above a bedroom ceiling. On an Ashburn townhouse tune-up, clearing that line matters as much as anything outside.
Outside, the condensers run on different clocks. The typical owner’s house in Broadlands went up in 2004 and in Belmont in 2005, so a builder’s condenser still running there is past twenty summers. Brambleton’s originals, from around 2011, are near fifteen; Moorefield’s and One Loudoun’s are near ten. On a ten-year-old unit the visit is mostly cleaning and a written record. Past twenty, the write-up also says plainly how much life we think is left.
Brambleton’s design guidelines require any air conditioner or heat pump visible from the street or a neighbor’s lot to sit behind landscaping or a screen that matches the house. Owners planted shrubs, and shrubs grow. The outdoor coil sheds the house’s heat into open air, and a boxwood leaning on the fins traps it. We clean the coil; the pruning is yours, a foot or two back before the visit.
The newest corners carry more heat pumps. About a third of Moorefield’s owners and a quarter in One Loudoun and Goose Creek Village heat with electricity, so those outdoor units ran all winter and reach spring with leaves packed against them. In Ashburn proper, the older core, more than a quarter of homes, and most in University Center, are condos and apartments, where a closet air handler’s drain heads toward the unit downstairs.