The first year in a first home can often come with questions nobody answered at closing, such as when does the air conditioner need service or how a furnace needs to be maintained. Who do you call when the water heater does something strange on a Saturday? Most new homeowners in the Columbia area answer these one emergency at a time, which is expensive and inconvenient. A maintenance membership is the alternative, and this post explains what the Cloud 10 Membership from 2nd Wind Heating & Air Conditioning is, what it includes, and how it takes the guesswork out of the first years of owning a home here.
The problem a membership solves
Owning a home means owning a heating and cooling system that runs half the year in Columbia, a water heater, plumbing that runs through a crawl space, and possibly a generator. Each of those needs something on a schedule, and the schedule is not written down anywhere in the house. New homeowners learn it by missing it, usually when the air conditioner fails during the first July heat wave and every company in town is booked for a week. A membership replaces that experience with a calendar we can help with.
What the Cloud 10 Membership includes
The Cloud 10 Membership is 2nd Wind’s maintenance agreement for homeowners who would rather prevent breakdowns than pay for them. Members receive two maintenance visits a year, one in spring for cooling and one in fall for heating, plus a third visit in the first year of membership. Each visit includes cleaning of both the indoor and outdoor coils, which restores airflow and efficiency for the long cooling season, along with the tests that catch failing parts early. Members receive a 15 percent discount on repairs, parts and labor included, with those repairs backed by a one-year parts and labor warranty. They receive a 5 percent discount on equipment, ductwork, indoor air quality products, water heaters, and backup generators. They pay a reduced diagnostic fee of $75 instead of $99 for standard visits, and $75 instead of $149 for after-hours and holiday visits. And they receive priority scheduling on all service calls, so during peak weeks their appointments are placed ahead of non-member appointments. Members also earn a $20 renewal credit for every customer they refer, with no limit.
The schedule you no longer have to keep
The most useful thing a new homeowner gets from the membership is that the two most important maintenance appointments of the year happen without anyone remembering them. Spring arrives and a technician arrives with it, before the heat does. Fall arrives and the heating side gets checked before the first cold morning at the end of October. The visits are the ones most equipment manufacturers require to keep a parts warranty valid, which is a detail many first-time owners learn about only when a claim is denied.
One company for the whole house
New homeowners often assemble a list of separate companies for heating, cooling, plumbing, and generators, and then have to remember which one to call for what. 2nd Wind handles all four across the Columbia area, so one number covers the heating, cooling, plumbing, and generator issues a house produces, and the member discounts on repairs and equipment apply across them. It also means the company that tuned up your system in spring is the one that knows its condition when something goes wrong in August, which shortens the diagnosis.
An advisor, not just a repair truck
The part of the membership that matters most to a new homeowner is hard to list as a feature. Every visit is a chance to ask what is normal. The technician can show you where the filter is and what size it takes, explain what the outdoor unit is doing and why it needs two feet of clearance, point out the water heater’s age and what its lifespan means for your budget, and tell you which sounds are ordinary and which are not. When a repair is recommended, the technician records a video of the problem so you can see it rather than take anyone’s word for it, and the price is given before any work begins. Over a few visits, a first-time homeowner learns their house from someone who has been inside hundreds like it.
What it costs and what it saves
The membership has an annual fee, which our office will quote for your home, and the value comes from three places. The two tune-ups would otherwise be booked and paid for separately, if they got booked at all. The discounts reduce the cost of every repair and every piece of equipment for as long as you are a member, and the reduced diagnostic fee alone saves $74 on a single after-hours call. And the maintenance itself lowers the number of repairs by catching weak parts before they fail, which in Columbia’s climate is the difference between a system that lasts 10 years and one that lasts 15. For a new homeowner with a limited budget for surprises, the predictable version of those costs is the one worth having.
Start the first year right
2nd Wind has served greater Columbia since 1985, and the first visit under a new membership is a good place to begin owning a home here. The technician documents the age and condition of the system on video, explains what you have, and sets the schedule for the visits that follow. You can enroll or ask questions online or through the 24/7 chat on our website, and the maintenance page has the full list of what members receive.