AC repair in Round Hill.

More than a century ago Round Hill drew summer visitors getting away from Washington’s heat, by the state historic register’s account. It still gets hot. NOAA’s 1991 to 2020 normals for the weather station in Purcellville, three miles east, put the July high near 86 degrees, with about 30 days a year at 90 or above, and on July 28, 2023, stations across western Loudoun read heat indices past 110.

Even so, the outdoor unit here works hardest in winter. The Census counts 53 percent of owner homes in 20141 heating with electricity, usually through heat pumps, and the Purcellville station logs 4,942 heating degree days a year to roughly 1,050 cooling ones. A heat pump’s run capacitor works every hour the compressor does, winter included, so it ages faster than one on a plain air conditioner; replacing it runs $240 to $370.

On June 16, 2016, winds near 61 knots uprooted big trees along New Cut Road, Bell Road and Main Street, and quarter-size hail fell in Round Hill on July 25, 2023. Hail folds the coil’s thin fins flat, and a coil that can’t breathe runs hot until a part gives out. After a storm, look for limbs in the fan grille, a cabinet pushed off level, fins flattened on the windward side. If floodwater reached it, leave the breaker off and call us; we’ll check it all before it runs again.

Inside the town limits most houses went up before the end of the 1920s, the Town’s plan says, so any cooling there came later, often an air handler tucked into the attic. Across 20141, about four owners in ten heat with propane, and in those houses the air conditioner usually borrows the propane furnace’s blower. A dusty blower wheel costs you in both seasons; pulling it and cleaning it runs $300 to $440.