HVAC Tips & Tricks
Your HVAC system is the heartbeat of your home. Nothing impacts the cozy, comfortable feel of a building more than managing temperature and humidity. You can paint your walls, change out the lighting, replace the furniture, or introduce all the fragrance in the world, A cold house in the winter, or a humid house in the summer just plain sucks.
So, do you have to drop tens of thousands to achieve comfort? NO! With a few of the tips below, you can get yourself on your way to feeling cozy in your home once and for all.
Start with the basics. If you have a system that moves air, It moves air and everything else floating in it. Your unit should have at minimum a basic filter on it. Replacing your filter regularly can not only keep the air you breathe clean, but can also reduce energy costs and prolong the life of your equipment.
On the note of air filters. Do you feel as though you are either not cleaning the air enough, or even replacing your air filter too often? Take a look at putting a larger air filter on your system. Benefits of a larger air filter is more surface area for things to accumulate. This means more time the filter can stay in the system. Also, you might be able to benefit from a higher MERV rated filter. However, It is important not to randomly select a filter based on MERV rating alone. Since the holes decrease in size with higher MERV rated products, the air works harder to pass through the material. The restricted air flow means your furnace is working hard to spread air throughout the house. For most houses, a good MERV range to stay in is MERV 8 to 12. For this reason, we highly suggest having your system inspected and your ductwork pressures checked prior to making a change in MERV rating.
The next thing that you can do is to take a good look at the duct system. Your ductwork is the vein system that gets your hot or cold air exactly were you need it. A duct system that is leaking (even slightly) can not only cost you lots of money by wasting conditioned air, but can cost you even more if cold air conditioned air that is meant to be inside you ductwork leaks outside because this often will cause condensation to build. That condensation can cause odors, water staining, or even mold. Not Good. We like to check duct system with a thermal imager to pin point any potential air leaks in your system, and seal them up before a problem arises.
Obviously general maintenance is important. Your HVAC system is by far the most expensive system in your building. Not having it operate clean can cause it to work harder, or even just stop working totally. Mark our words, this will naturally happen on the coldest night of the year too. A well maintained HVAC system will keep you comfortable, and tend to last years longer than an unmaintained system.
Quit choking your system out! All to often we see Air conditioners and Heat Pump systems that have way too much stuff around them. Often it is just landscaping that has gotten out of control. Choking off the air flow to your outdoor unit can cause major damage to the system if allowed to operate. Now, before you go cutting down all of your vegetation, know that some vegetation such as small to medium sized trees can drastically help your A/C. Based on our testing, strategically placed bushes and trees which cast a shadow over your air conditioning condenser, can actually help the overall efficiency by as much around 9% over a cooling season. Now 9% may not sound like much but remember, if your current air conditioning condenser consumes 2300 Watts per hour and runs for 45min per hour on a 90 degree day in the summer, you could save enough to buy yourself a … well, a single cheeseburger in 2026. You get the point, It all adds up. Now before you go planting trees, bushes, and shrubbery around your A/C, remember to pick out a plant that will not drop sap, needles, leaves, or flowers into the condensing unit, and be sure to leave plenty of room for the condenser to breath (minimum of 24″), and room for your Sandwell technician to work.