Autumn in Georgia—how absolutely gorgeous. But don’t get so busy enjoying the fall weather that you forget to take care of business that needs to be done before winter. We’ll help you.
Here’s a fall prep checklist, so you can get your HVAC system switched over for the season: your AC shut down properly and heat ready to go. Let’s get to it!
The weather might be just perfect right now—there’s nothing quite like autumn in Georgia—but there’s something you need to remember. It won’t be long before winter arrives, with low temperatures and chill breezes! You’ll want to cozy up indoors. But the more time you spend inside, the more likely you are to be affected by your poor indoor air quality.
During the winter, you’ll be breathing whatever comes out of your vents as your heating system runs to keep you warm enough. The air will cycle back through, flow through your ducts, and come out your vents again. What can you do to have fewer contaminants in your indoor air this winter? It’s time to think about those ducts, and whether they need any repair.
Here’s an astonishing fact for you: on average, in an American home, there are so many gaps and cracks in the ductwork that up to 30% of the home’s heated and cooled air is lost. Wasted! It escapes from the ducts into places like the attic or between walls, where it isn’t doing you any good.
Are you astonished? Are you perhaps upset? Do you feel like you might have been paying far too much for heating and cooling?
The good news is that ductwork can be repaired. On occasion, due to widespread deterioration, a section of ductwork might need to be replaced. But for the most part, the cracks, holes, tears, or gaps in ductwork are caused by isolated incidents.
What in the world could be causing all this damage to the ducts in your home? There are a few common culprits. We’ll give you a rundown.
Perhaps you’ve had an HVAC installation recently, or you’re expecting to have one soon. Perhaps you’re a new homeowner, accustomed to having a landlord address all the issues that require hiring a contractor. Whatever the situation, it’s always good to know more about your home, the systems in it, and the services those systems require. Armed with this knowledge, you’ll keep your home in better shape.
A piece of that knowledge has to do with the professionals who can provide the services you need. Who should you call when something goes wrong? When it comes to your HVAC system, you should only ever have to call one contractor. Here are the services a reliable HVAC contractor will provide.
The system of ductwork in your home is like a silent partner in your HVAC system. You probably don’t notice it, it doesn’t call much attention to itself, but it does a lot of the work that needs to be done. All year round, whether your furnace is making hot air or your air conditioner is making cold air, the ducts handle the distribution.
It’s important to have your furnace and air conditioner professionally maintained every year. But even if you do that, making sure those systems are as efficient and effective as possible, you might be wasting the hot and cold air they provide. Damaged ductwork causes your utility bills to be excessively high, and your furnace and AC to work too hard. How can you tell if you need duct repair?
Americans spend too much on the energy it takes to keep our homes at a comfortable temperature. According to the US Energy Information Administration, more than half of the energy used in American homes is put toward heating and cooling. That’s a huge environmental impact, and a huge amount of money spent every single month.
Are you stressed out from the cost of keeping your home cool enough in the summer and warm enough in the winter? Do you wish there was something you could do to keep those costs down? We’d like to help you with that. Here is our guide to using your HVAC system as efficiently as possible all year round. These tips will lower your utility bills and keep your HVAC system happy.
The percentage of the average American’s income that goes to heating and cooling their homes varies depending on the part of the country where they live. In our area, we spend more months having to cool our homes and fewer having to heat them. But overall, heating and cooling costs are the largest portion of energy use in American homes.
How can we cut the cost of heating and cooling without sacrificing our comfort? Is it even possible? Yes! In fact, you can use less energy—and spend less money—on heating and cooling while making your home more comfortable. A zone control system is the answer.
Ductwork makes so much possible. It was first introduced around half a century ago to facilitate suddenly popular central air conditioning. Once so many homes had ducts, it only made sense to also use them for heating, and now forced-air furnaces are the most common heating systems in the country.
But everything, even if it’s a great plan overall, has the potential for problems. The problems ductwork is most likely to face are damage, caused by something specific, and deterioration, caused simply by time. Damaged or deteriorating ducts can have cracks and holes. What problems are created by duct leaks, and how can they be fixed? Read on to find out.
Is it time to replace your air conditioner? Maybe it failed completely at the end of last summer, or maybe you know it’s on its last legs. But since you’re looking into your replacement options, you’ve probably started to wonder whether a traditional air conditioner or a heat pump is a better choice.
Before you consult a professional for help sorting through the possibilities, you may want some more information. Here are some reasons you might want a heat pump instead of an air conditioner, and some reasons why you might decide against it.
It would be a challenge for you to find a homeowner in our area who doesn’t care how efficiently their air conditioner operates. Given how much of our cooling that we use every year, it makes sense that when the time comes to start using it again in the spring, we want to do so as affordably as possible.
What many folks don’t think about, however, is the role that the “V” part of “HVAC” plays. V stands for ventilation, and your ductwork makes up the ventilation system, connecting your forced-air HVAC systems to the outdoors, making the distribution of conditioned air possible.
Ductwork is often out of sight, and therefore out of mind—behind walls or in attics and crawlspaces. So it’s not easy for you to see when and if it’s damaged… but what can happen if it is damaged?
