Be Prepared: Summer HVAC Checklist

As every season begins, it is important to evaluate the needs of your home’s HVAC system. For the summer months, this means taking a look at its air conditioning unit to ensure proper cooling without being forced to expend too much energy. Let’s take a look at a few summer HVAC tips that will help improve your residence’s home comfort capabilities.

Schedule Annual Inspection

If you haven’t already scheduled the annual maintenance that is recommended for your cooling system, now’s the perfect time to call up a qualified HVAC technician and get it done. This will help ensure the system’s efficiency and increase its longevity.

Be Diligent About the Filter

It’s obvious that you’ll be running your air conditioning on a rather continuous basis during the summer months to help maintain a reasonable comfort level throughout your home. This will force your air filter to catch more debris than before, so it’s important that you check it on a regular basis basis and replace it as necessary.

Upgrade the System, If Needed

Even though upgrading your entire air conditioning system can be a costly endeavor, it may be time to do so if your system is showing its age or has …

Homeowners: Your HVAC Vacation Checklist

With the winter season behind us, it’s time to start thinking about going on vacation with your family and friends. Before you hit the road or take to the skies, however, it’s important that you complete an HVAC vacation checklist. Here are a few items to help you get started:

Schedule Annual Maintenance

The best way to keep your HVAC system running effectively when you’re on vacation and prolong its operational lifespan is to schedule annual maintenance. Call up your trusted technician and set up an appointment before you leave on vacation. Just remember that the sooner you call, the more quickly you can improve the system’s efficiency.

Program Your Thermostat

If your home isn’t already equipped with a programmable thermostat, definitely pick one up. This will help you maintain better control of your energy usage all year long. Then, be sure to set your temperature around 80 or 85 degrees to keep your home comfortable without causing utility costs to build up while you’re gone.

Block Out the Heat

As everyone knows, sun coming through the windows will heat up your home, causing your cooling system to run longer and more often. The easiest way to prevent this while …

Getting Rid of HVAC Noise

You don’t expect complete silence when your HVAC equipment is running to combat the heat of summer. Low-level sounds of a motor or air movement through the ducts is normal, but excessive HVAC noise is a disruptive nuisance. Fortunately, there are options available to lessen loud noises like the following:

Banging and Popping Sounds

Bangs and pops in the ducts occur because metal naturally expands and contracts due to normal temperature/pressure changes between cycles. If the noise is excessive, your technician can look for other possible causes and take measures like these to quiet things down:

Fix damaged/sagging ductwork sections Seal and then wrap accessible ducts in sound-minimizing insulation Add duct silencers Install insulated spacers if duct sections are contacting framing members Loud Whooshing Noises

If you hear loud whooshing coming from the air vents with every cycle of the blower fan, it can indicate too high a static pressure within the HVAC system. High static pressure should be addressed promptly because it can also restrict airflow and damage your equipment, or shorten its useful lifespan. Your technician can perform various tests to identify the cause, then advise you on the steps needed to correct the problem, such as: …

Best Ways to Find an HVAC Leak

The refrigerant level in your HVAC system shouldn’t drop under normal conditions. This is because refrigerant isn’t used up or consumed – it simply moves through a sealed loop of copper tubing, absorbing heat as it goes through the evaporator coil, and releasing it outdoors via the condenser coil. If the refrigerant is escaping through an HVAC leak, a range of problems will develop, including:

Higher Utility Bills

As refrigerant leaks out, the HVAC system will have to cycle longer and burn more energy to reach your chosen temperature setting on the thermostat.

Decrease in Cooling Capabilities

A drop in the refrigerant level causes a corresponding decrease in your HVAC’s cooling capabilities. This means your home will stay feeling uncomfortably hot and humid, even after you lower the thermostat setting.

Warmer Air at the Registers

If you test the temperature of the airflow coming from your home’s A/C vents, you’ll find it doesn’t feel as cool as usual.

Odd Noises From the Coils

An HVAC leak in either the evaporator or condenser coil often causes a distinctive gurgling or hissing noise. Not hearing these sounds doesn’t mean the refrigerant level is fine, because leaks can also occur …

Why Sealed Combustion Closet is Essential for Safe Home Air

If your Peachtree City home has a gas furnace or water heater inside, you may not realize that the equipment can pose a hazard to your family’s health and safety. To ensure you have a healthy, safe home air supply, it’s vital to learn about this potential risk and why a sealed combustion closet is the solution.

Why Combustion Equipment May Pose a Safety Risk

Furnaces and water heaters are commonly installed within the conditioned envelope of a home, so they get the air needed for combustion from the surrounding room. They’re also vented outdoors to allow exhaust fumes to exit. An installation setup like this can pose two serious threats to your family’s safety:

Water heater exhaust backdrafting. When combustion air is being drawn from inside the home and expelled outdoors, negative pressure can pull hazardous fumes back down the exhaust pipe. This can lead to incomplete fuel combustion in the appliance’s burner, and send life-threatening carbon monoxide into your home’s air supply. Loss of a critical furnace safety feature. If your water heater’s vent pipe is connected to your furnace flue and it becomes blocked, the sensor in the furnace may not accurately detect the resulting increase in …