Posts Tagged ‘Hardin County’

The Hardest HVAC Maintenance: A Guide from Orange

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

Do you hate to work on your own mechanical equipment in your Orange home, like furnaces and plumbing fixtures? You aren’t alone. Many people are not cut out to be do-it-yourselfers (DIYers). They prefer to hand off their maintenance and repair chores to qualified professional. That’s not a bad thing. But there are lots of DIYers who prefer to work on their own home repairs – and those are the people who aren’t afraid to take on the most challenging jobs.

If you are looking for good ideas on how to maintain your home’s heating and cooling (HVAC) system beyond the normal filter changeouts, here are some good things to check – things that will help with the overall performance of your HVAC system.

  1. Check the ventilation system. The ventilation carries conditioned air from a main source throughout your home.  It takes a little time and effort to check your ventilation system for things like cracks or leaks around joints, but it is an important maintenance task. You may even find separations between joints or holes caused by nails. A leaky ventilation system could be sending conditioned air into attics, walls, or crawlspaces and making your furnace work extra hard just to keep your living areas warm and comfortable. Take time to visually inspect as much of your ventilation system as possible – usually metal or flex duct – and repair using joint glue, metal filler, or duct tape.
  2. Inspect the insulation. Your heating system works in conjunction with the insulation in your home to provide comfort and warmth while saving you on high utility bills. A home that is poorly insulated or not insulated at all will cause a furnace to work harder and not only send utility bills higher, but increase the possibility of mechanical failure. Replacing or adding insulation in walls and crawlspaces is a relatively easy, yet time-consuming task. You can roll down or tack up fiber insulation or blow in insulation into walls. You can also seal up cracks on your home’s walls, roof, or foundation with a number of different products. Once again, your goal is to make your heating system work less and save you money.
  3. Check the visible components of the furnace. A build-up of dust and dirt can make the moving components of your furnace work even harder, such as the motors, fan belts, contactors, etc. If you live in an area where there is lots of dust and humidity or if your home has several occupants and/or animals, it is particularly important to check your system on a regular basis. This can be done by removing the access panels and taking a vacuum cleaner hose into as many areas as possible. A good, thorough vacuuming should produce immediate results and make your furnace run much more efficiently.

Try these three steps and you may not have to repeat them for another year or so – possibly not ever again while you live in your home.

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Choosing an Environmentally Friendly Refrigerant for Your Air Conditioner: A Tip from Orange

Friday, October 21st, 2011

For years, we heard about how bad air conditioners were for the environment. Specifically, the liquid used in them to remove heat from air in your Orange home contributes to the hole in the Ozone layer. Today however, air conditioners (along with every other appliance or device that uses refrigerant) have been upgraded to work with newer, better chemicals.

R-22 Refrigerant

While R-22 refrigerant is still used in devices sold today, it is being gradually phased out. According to the Montreal Protocol, R-22 refrigerant will no longer be allowed in new devices as of January 1, 2020 in the United States (though it can be used to service existing devices via recycled or reused refrigerant). While the most environmentally damaging refrigerants such as HCFC-141b have been removed from the market, R-22 is still considered harmful to the environment if allowed to enter the atmosphere.

R-410A Refrigerant

So, if R-22 will soon not be permitted (and is not an environmentally friendly option), what is? Currently, the most common refrigerant used in new residential air conditioners is R-410A. After the Clean Air Act was passed, the EPA reviewed a number of refrigerants to determine which were the least damaging to the environment (and human health) and which could be used as alternatives to R-22. At the top of the list is R-410A, a blend of different HFCs that don’t deplete the ozone. Sometimes called Puron, Forane, or Genetron AZ-20, R-410A is a good choice if you’re having a new system installed.

Other Alternatives

Of course, because R-410A is a hydrofluorocarbon, it does contribute to global warming and therefore is a risk to the environment, albeit in a much smaller capacity than older refrigerants. Recently, the EPA approved the use of HFO-1234yf – a chemical that pollutes 99.7% less than the current refrigerant used in car air conditioners. Whether it will be used in homes and commercial spaces remains to be seen, but the technology is advancing rapidly, allowing us to stay cool without sacrificing our planet’s health and future to do so.

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Simple Filter Tips From Liberty on How to Keep Your Ducts Clean

Monday, September 19th, 2011

If there’s one thing you can count on with a home comfort system in Liberty, it’s that there will be higher energy bills in the summer and an increase in dust and debris in your ductwork. But, luckily the latter can be fixed with a few simple filtration upgrades in your home.

The Nature of a Forced Air System

When you flip the switch on your thermostat and your air conditioner or furnace turns on, it starts drawing air from inside your house, conditioning it to the right temperature, and then circulating it back into your rooms through an air handler and ductwork. Of course, a good system should have proper ventilation to circulate new air into the house, but let’s face it – no matter how much ventilation you have in your home, there will always be dust and debris from things like pets, plants and other common household items.

So, when the air gets circulated back through the ducts, all sorts of debris and sediment build up. That’s not to mention the possible presence of actual contaminants like bacteria or mold. Luckily, because of how your forced air system is built, these are not tough problems to deal with.

Installing the Right Filters

Filtration is incredibly important for adding the right level of protection to your home’s ductwork. Usually placed directly within your air handlers, whole house air filters are designed to capture particles as small as 0.3 microns (if you purchase a high quality HEPA filter). That pretty much covers all dust, sediment, pollen, dander and other common allergens.

There are a number of other upgrades you can make to capture just about everything you house spits into those ducts – from bacteria and viruses to smoke and other air pollutants, but at the very least a good filter system will save your lungs, cut back on duct cleaning costs and make it much easier to maintain your home’s air quality throughout the year.

To learn more about HEPA filters and the specific ratings offered in various products, here is a link to the EPA’s guide to home air cleaners. It has a handy breakdown of different types of filtration and what each filter grade can capture.

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Posted in Indoor Air Quality | Comments Off