Don’t wait until your family is uncomfortably hot this summer to check in on your air conditioning unit. Make sure its ready to beat the heat by following these simple steps below.
Barron Heating AC Electrical & Plumbing Blog: Archive for the ‘Comfort’ Category
Get Your AC Unit Ready for Summer
Monday, April 23rd, 20184 Steps to Reduce Spring Allergens in Your Home
Thursday, March 16th, 2017It’s not called “allergy season” for nothing.
Spring is finally in the air! And with the arrival of birds, blue sky and warmer weather comes pesky allergens that can aggravate you and your family and negatively impact health. Keep the pollen, dust mites, and pet dander at bay by regularly maintaining your HVAC system. The better it runs, the happier and healthier your home will be.
Change Your Filters
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: pay attention to your filters! Check your filters every month, and replace every 3 months or so depending on wear. You want to make sure your unit is working efficiently to keep particles and allergens out of your family’s space, especially when any members are particularly susceptible (like asthma sufferers).
Check for Mold
Mold is an unfriendly guest no matter where you find it. It can be especially irritating when it takes up in your HVAC system, worsening allergies and overall health. If you see mold or notice a musty smell coming from your vents, it may be time to schedule a duct cleaning.
Seal it up
To prevent excess pollen and other particulates from making their way inside your home, one DIY approach is to weatherstrip, caulk or spray foam around windows, doors, and other problem areas. Taking these measures can help your air conditioner or heating system run to its fullest efficiency (and save you money).
Call in a Professional
After you’ve made the rounds yourself, it’s never a bad idea to get a full system checkup from a trained professional. Much like your family’s health, your HVAC system is an investment; it needs to be treated with care and attention to be at its best.
Don’t wait until your whole family is sneezing and miserable, contact Barron Heating & Air Conditioning to schedule a maintenance appointment today!
4 Winter Home Projects
Thursday, January 26th, 2017
Tools forming a house with energy efficiency chimney
Home improvement isn’t just for warmer weather
It’s the middle of winter and all you want to do is hibernate, right? Maybe you were buzzing with home improvement energy in the fall, ready to get everything in order before the cold weather set in. Maybe you’re saving your excitement for coming spring and summer projects. We get it. While it may be tempting to give in to winter routine and put your home on the backburner, we have some winter projects to keep your house humming and your hands busy.
1) Check in on crawlspaces
We’re no strangers to damp and chilly winter weather here in the Pacific Northwest. Our houses endure months of it year after year. It wouldn’t hurt to make sure your crawl spaces aren’t falling victim to moisture damage, hibernating rodents, or improper insulation. If you’re not familiar with the ins and outs of crawlspace maintenance, we recommend having an expert come over to assess your house’s health. Bonus article: Avoid 8 DIY Crawl Space Mistakes
2) Start a landscaping project
We suggest using our rainy climate to your advantage to create a rain garden. This is simply a garden that uses tiered draining to filter runoff. Not only is a rain garden great for natural filtering, it also allows you to take advantage of diverse Pacific Northwest flora to create an attractive addition to your yard. Bonus article: How to Build a Rain Garden to Filter Runoff
6 Tips to Keep Your Wallet Happy This Winter
Wednesday, December 14th, 2016Don’t let your winter heating costs get you down
Sure, in the short walk from your heated car to your heated office the cold winter air may be refreshing, but I’m sure there are few among us who don’t appreciate the comfort of a well-heated house at the end of the day. I’ll also bet there are few among us whose energy bills don’t see some kind of spike in these winter months either. That part’s not so comforting.
But before you scramble to take up residence someplace more tropical, we’ve put together 6 tips to help keep your house warm and wallet happy this winter.
1. Go smart (with a smart/programmable thermostat)
Automatically control the temperature of your house when you’re working, sleeping, or otherwise occupied with a programmable thermostat, and you can save from 5 to 20% on your heating bill. No need to worry about remembering to turn your heat down when you leave the house–programmable thermostats take the hassle out of heating.
Homeowners: Don’t get duped!
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2016Read these tips on how to choose a contractor and protect your money.
Homeowners should be very careful before choosing a heating and cooling contractor for their home. There are huge differences in quality and professionalism throughout the industry. The “best” contractors will typically be members of one or more professional contractor associations. You should be looking for contractors who are well-educated and certified in three particular areas:
Does Your HVAC System Suffer From High Blood Pressure?
Wednesday, November 4th, 2015Your furnace, heat pump or air conditioner is the heart of your comfort system.
It’s often said that your furnace, heat pump or air conditioner is the heart of your comfort system. Following the analogy further, your air ducts are its veins & arteries.
And just like high blood pressure is bad for your heart, high “duct static pressure” is bad for your heating and cooling system, your comfort – and your wallet.
When you go to the doctor for a check-up, common practice is for the doctor or nurse to measure your blood pressure. Our service technicians now have the instruments and training to do the same for your ducts when we do the seasonal tune-up, or a home and duct performance assessment.
We’ve been doing this for a while now, and the results are often eye-opening. The heating and cooling equivalent to 80 over 120 is “half an inch” of water column pressure for most systems. When we test the duct pressure, we now routinely find pressures significantly higher than this –often over double!
Why does this matter?
Higher Utility Bills: High pressures in the ducts leads to lower airflow. Lower airflow means lower efficiency. Lower efficiency means higher monthly utility bills.
Comfort: Lower airflow leads to poor distribution of conditioned air throughout the home, contributing to hot and cold spots, or the system not keeping up on the hottest or coldest days.
Noise: High static pressure is often a clue as to why a system is excessively noisy – the same repairs to reduce static pressure usually decrease noise as well.
Repairs: Low airflow causes furnaces to overheat internally, and air conditioners and heat pumps to not function smoothly. Many common expensive repairs – or premature total failure – are directly attributable to low airflow.
The good news is that identifying high static pressure allows us to prescribe the right medicine to make your system and your home happier! Each system is different – but most common airflow improvements are fairly simple and economical. And best of all, they pay for themselves through more efficient operation and lower utility bills.
Next time your HVAC contractor visits your home, ask your technician to take the time to check your ducts static pressure and explain the results. If you are having any comfort, dust or high utility bill issues, give a home performance trained contractor a call and they’ll explain your options for home & duct performance assessments.
I can’t believe I’ve never seen this before!
Tuesday, July 21st, 2015Blower Door Demonstration on Home Improvement’s Tool Time… Enjoy!
Insulate Your Home for the Summer!
Thursday, April 16th, 2015
Insulation is important in the winter for obvious reasons, but did you know it also helps to keep your home cool in the summer?
Though insulation may seem obvious in this day and age, older homes often have very little or no insulation.
Because heating and cooling accounts for 50-70% of all energy costs, adding insulation is a critical step for anyone interested in lowering their energy bill.
It can be difficult to invest money in something you can’t even see day-to-day, but in the overall performance of your home, it’s critically important. And it’s becoming less and less hard on your pocketbook to install these much-needed updates. There are rebate programs through Puget Sound Energy and Cascade Natural Gas, and in some cases, rebate matching through the Community Energy Challenge (CEC).
Check out this great article: for a thorough description of the types of insulation, where in your home to put it, and much more!
The article also discusses geeky but useful things like R-Value of insulation. Turns out it stands for Resistance to heat flow. That makes sense! The DOE recommends an R-Value of R-49 for attics. And the better your insulation, the less hard your heating and cooling system will have to work, and therefore the longer before it breaks down. Win-win-win.
So, how do you know how much insulation you have in your home and where? Well, if you are handy and don’t mind wading through it yourself there are DIY ways of checking for insulation. However, if you’d rather leave it to the professionals, a Home Performance Assessment will tell you definitively where the insulation is. An Infrared Camera, used in most assessments, can look right through your walls!
HVAC Helper – A Glossary for Homeowners
Monday, March 9th, 2015HVAC HELPER
A glossary for homeowners or business-owners thinking about heating, air conditioning, and home performance
AFUE (Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency) – AFUE is the rated efficiency of a combustion furnace. For example, a 95% AFUE model loses 5% of its produced heat up the chimney. In other words, $1 of fuel combusted in an 80% AFUE model loses $0.20 before it even enters the ducts.
Condensate (Condensation) – Heat pumps, air conditioners, and modern furnaces produce condensation and the removal of this collected water is always considered in system design.
Cold Air Return – The “cold air return” is the intake side (sucking side) of a duct system. This duct pulls air from the home and feeds it to the furnace to be reheated for distribution. Leaks in the return air duct are very important to seal as they allow material to be pulled in from wherever they lead (attics, crawlspaces, etc.). Unducted wall cavities are not acceptable for cold air returns in the modern HVAC world, as they are known to reduce efficiency and cause health safety issues.
COP (Coefficient of Performance) – This is an efficiency rating system that compares the output of heat to the consumption of electricity. An electric baseboard or electric furnace (aka resistance heat source) has a COP of 1.0, which means that for every unit of electricity that goes in, you get one unit of heat energy out. A heat pump may have a COP of 3.0- for every unit of electricity that goes in, you get three units of heat energy out.
$1 of heat with a baseboard heater = $3 of heat with a Heat Pump (3.0 COP)
Ducted Filtration and Furnace Filters – Filters located on either the furnace or grille end of the intake duct protect the furnace components from the build-up of airborne particles. More advanced filtration systems can be effective at cleaning the air in a home, but only if the duct and house leakage has been addressed. Filters are rated on the “MERV” scale based on how small of particles they are able to remove from the air stream.
**The Supply Duct Filters available at hardware stores are not recommended. They will negatively affect efficiency and air quality, as well as damage equipment.
Duct Sealing – According to extensive nationwide studies, duct leakage is a leading cause of wasted energy, poor indoor air quality, excessive dust, and comfort complaints. A study by the U.S. Department of Energy found that the typical duct system loses between 25% and 40% of its paid-for heat! Leaks are repaired with either hand applied material or a more comprehensive internal seal using an aerosol dispersed polymer (www.AeroSeal.com).
Duct Sizing – Proper duct sizing is of absolute importance in effectively delivering conditioned air to the home. Improper duct sizing can lower the efficiency of the system, limit distribution (affecting comfort), and cause unnecessary ware on equipment.
Electric Resistance Heat – Think “toaster”. Baseboard heaters, wall heaters and electric furnaces are all forms of electric resistance heat technology and produce heat by passing electricity through a material that causes “resistance,” heats up and then radiates that heat either into an air stream or directly into a room. This is a very inefficient form of heating by modern standards and is going the way of the dodo as a primary heating source in most situations.
Fan Motors – There are two types of fan motors in the world of furnaces:
ECM (Electronically Commutated Motor) – These are variable speed motors that can ramp up and down depending on the call from the thermostat or furnace.
PSC (Permanent Split Capacitor) – These are single speed motors that are on or off.
Heat Pump (Ductless Mini Split) – Ductless Heat Pumps are the world’s most popular heating system. For most standard application, they are the most efficient and cost effective to install. For this reason, utility companies offer significant incentives to upgrade. This is a zonal heating system that operates on a refrigerant technology (see “Heat Pump” below). They do not utilize a duct system to distribute conditioned air.
Heat Pump (Forced Air) – Heat Pumps are really just an air conditioner that can go in reverse. In addition to the cooling process, these have the ability take the heat from the outdoor air and transfer it to the inside of your home. When the heat bearing refrigerant enters the “coil” at the furnace, the heat is picked up in the air stream and distributed into the home. This technology is significantly more efficient at creating heat than propane or electric resistance and even more efficient than natural gas.
Home Performance (AKA, Building Science) – Home Performance refers to the understanding that the whole house as a system and each component affects all others. For example: leaks in the ductwork will worsen indoor air quality, raise utility bills, cause drafts, shorten the lifespan of the furnace, and negatively affect health; air leaks to the attic through recessed lighting will do all the same things; both together will affect those things, but even more so. Because of these relationships, understanding your home’s performance through diagnostic testing is recommended by the US Department of Energy, Energy Star, and Consumer Reports before making any investment in heating, cooling, energy efficiency, or home health upgrades.
HSPF (Heating Season Performance Factor) – HSPF is the standard rating system for Heat Pumps. This is a rating given by regulatory agencies to compare the efficiency at which the heat pump operates to that of other heat pumps.
Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) – “Indoor air quality” refers to the potential impact of your home’s air on occupant health and comfort. IAQ is judged on the presence of humidity, dust, radon gas, mold, fiberglass particulate, carbon monoxide and many other conditions. IAQ should be considered a high priority as it will affect both the long and short term health of occupants. Poor IAQ can exacerbate or cause: asthma, sinus infections, chronic respiratory ailments, eczema, fatigue, headaches, and many other issues.
Refrigerant – Refrigerant is the substance used in air conditioning and heat pump systems to transfer heat between the interior and exterior of the home. The refrigerant is transported in copper tubing between the indoor and outdoor coils. When the refrigerant is pressurized it absorbs heat from the air around it.
Registers (aka Grilles) – Registers, grilles, diffusers, and grates are all basically the same thing. In the industry they are commonly referred to as “grilles” or “diffusers.”
SEER (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio) – SEER is the standard rating system for air conditioners. This is a rating given by regulatory agencies to compare the efficiency at which the air conditioner operates.
Static Pressure – Static pressure is the outward pressure of a substance against its container. In this industry we are concerned most often with the static pressure of the air in the duct system. Good static pressure allows for even distribution throughout the home, efficient removal of heat from the furnace’s heat exchanger or refrigerant coil, and less noise as the air ejects from the grille. Bad static pressure can exacerbate leakage, damage heating equipment, and significantly lower efficiency.
Supply Air – “Supply air” ducting is the delivery system for conditioned air- warm or cool. Supply air ducts should always be well sealed as any air that is lost out these pressurized ducts is lost to the outside, even when it is in a wall or floor cavity.
For more information, call or email your Home Performance Experts and set up a Home Performance Assessment!
Annual Furnace Service (Part I of our Annual Maintenance Series!)
Wednesday, December 31st, 2014Most of us are pinching pennies after the holidays. This means that home maintenance services that aren’t absolutely necessary often get pushed to the back burner. I’ve heard many folks (myself included!) wonder things like “Is annual maintenance really necessary for my furnace,” or “couldn’t I do that myself and save some money?”
These are great questions! Let’s demystify annual HVAC maintenance by going over: 1. Why an annual service might be important 2. Whether or not all HVAC maintenance is performed equally 3. What, exactly, your service tech (or, what a good one, anyway) should be accomplishing during their visit, and 4. Could annual maintenance be a DIY project?
Is annual maintenance important for your furnace or heating system?
The short answer is yes. But let’s not leave it at that.
Houses are like cars in many ways (except if you’re lucky, you don’t spend nearly as much time in your car as you do your home). So, why is it that most people agree regular car maintenance is critical, whereas it still seems up for debate that your home also needs scheduled care from a professional? Like a car, home heating systems are composed of many intricate parts that all have to work together to deliver healthy, warm, efficient, and cost-effective heat. And, like an inspection and oil change for your car, a regular inspection and maintenance for your furnace can undoubtedly extend the life of your heating system, and the overall health of your home.
Most people know what happens to a car without the routine recommended maintenance. But what happens to your home without an annual furnace maintenance?
A neglected furnace or heating system could result in:
- Utility bills going up. No one wants to spend more money on monthly heat bills than they need to. No one. A high heat bill is one major indicator that your furnace needs attention.
- Your furnace could need replacing sooner. ALL furnace manufacturers recommend a yearly service. Having to buy a new furnace could mean prematurely shelling out thousands of dollars to keep your family comfortable. If you can extend the life of your current system with under $150 per year, you probably should.
- A furnace that hasn’t been properly cleaned can overheat, become clogged, start a fire, release carbon monoxide into your home (cracked heat exchanger), or simply make your furnace shut off. I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer a yearly maintenance to breathing carbon monoxide, yikes!
- Illnesses and allergies can be (and often are) caused or exacerbated by faulty or dirty heating systems. This is the air your family breathes, after all.
Are all Annual Maintenance calls performed equally?
Will these items listed above be addressed when you schedule a service call? Unfortunately, the answer is maybe. The service you receive can vary drastically depending on who you call and what you pay. One company can give your furnace or boiler a clean bill of health; whereas another company could come in a week later and find that a multitude of things were not properly taken care of.
There seems to be no industry standard for what is included in an annual maintenance appointment. Many companies offer a “basic tune-up,” a “comprehensive maintenance,” or something by a different name or somewhere in between. Your best bet is to ask the technician what they will be doing exactly. He or she should be able to quickly give a complete list of items they’ll be cleaning or checking; it should look something like the list below.
What exactly needs to be done annually?
This checklist is the minimum of what should be performed at a comprehensive service appointment. A good HVAC company will also take note of the home performance implications that arise. Technicians who are trained to identify home performance issues will recognize things like duct leakage, house leakage, excessive dust in the home or ducts, rodent issues, and other problems that won’t necessarily be resolved by routine furnace maintenance. Finding and addressing these home performance gaps will lead to a much more efficient, healthy, and warm home.
Basic Annual Furnace Maintenance:
- Test temperature rise through furnace
- Test all furnace safety controls for proper operation
- Test thermostat for proper operation
- Test and adjust furnace gas pressure if applicable
- Check furnace electrical connections and wiring condition
- Test furnace sequence of operation
- Clean furnace blower compartment
- Check and clean furnace burner compartment
- Check furnace blower wheel
- Check and clean furnace burners if applicable
- Inspect venting for rust and/or corrosion
- Check and clean flame sensor and pilot assembly if applicable
- Lubricate all moving parts if applicable
- Replace furnace filter
- For all fossil-fuel burning equipment: Carbon Monoxide Detection test performed in living area
Could the homeowner do all of this herself?
The homeowner could in fact do all of these things, but only if they know how to perform all or most of the items on the list above. I for one, don’t know anyone who isn’t an HVAC professional who can adequately execute all of these checks and cleanings. A heating professional should be able to complete and explain to you everything on the list above; which is what makes them worth the 100 to 150 bucks it costs to do it right!
Hopefully this post has helped to take some of the complexity and mystery out of the annual furnace maintenance. Keeping your annual appointment is all about preventative measures. Following recommended maintenance will likely keep you warm and healthy longer, and keep unexpected furnace shut-downs at bay!