Air Conditioning - Old and not worth more money

Six months ago I bought a house I was renting for 2 years and have a 15 yr old unit that is covered under a home warranty. This unit has been repaired so many times it probably has more replaced parts than new parts. It's been recharged every year with what the service tech said each time was a high amount of gas. It runs constantly and the electric bills this year are out if sight. My luck! Just had the warranty company send a tech out as it was blowing warm air. He got it working but now it's on all the time. It's 15 years old and needs to die. Any helpful ideas on how the speed up it's certain death? It's a terrible question but this thing is an environmentally hazard as well as a huge financial drain.

My advice is to ditch the home warranty thing, then find a good a/c tech and see what options are available.

All too often, people think their HW company will give them new equipment. Not likely. From what I have seen, the repairs are often just a patch job.

I agree HWs aren't very good. I had to pay a $55 fee for the call then another $65 to get it running again. The tech was a jerk. It's not a matter IF the unit will die, it's WHEN. The HW came with buying the house. It's very common around here to have it included when buying a 'used' house. I'm sure when this dies, the HW company wll pacth the heck out of this unit which is really throwing money down the drain. It's 15 years old and at best is 60% efficient. I had a reputable HVAC company come out to look at it and, as presicted, wished me luck with the HW company and working up a price for a new a/c and heating unit. His words 'the a/c is old, the heating unit is ancient'. My luck is the unit will completelt die an hour after the HW expires. I'm not naive enough to think they'll pay for a new unit but I'd hope they'd pay towards something other than patches for the enxt 6 months.
Thanks for any suggestions.

I can't stand HW work. I get one of these service calls every week or so. It actually limits the service that a customer is allowed to receive. You have to go there, diagnose whats wrong, then spend an hour our so on the phone waiting for an approval to complete the work. sometimes you don't even receive approval to complete the repair because it's not covered.

We service techs are told to go to these calls, fix the immediate problem and be on our way. I can honsetly say that I never feel good when I leave one of these homes.

I'd say ditch the HW unit. Invest in a new system for the home. A brand new unit may hit your wallet in the short run, but its better than dumping money into an energy guzzling monster.

I am familiar with a couple of companies in my home city who do home warranty work.
They will provide their service to whoever sells the package for next to nothing because the fine print makes them a lot of money.
Not included is an annual check-up for somewhere around $80.00 that is required to keep the policy in force and any repairs needed at the inspection are also not covered.

Besides the fact that is is illegal and unethical to add refrigerant every year this alone is milking you dry.

I highly suspect that if you were able to find a good tech who wasn't out to sell new equipment you likely could get reliably fixed up for not too much money, even if only to give yourself time enough to plan to replace it all.

Being under pressure is no time to make any major purchase.