Archive for September, 2010

While you have your contractor doing your routine fall tune-up, why not have them conduct a home-energy audit? A home-energy audit will tell you how insulated your home is against the elements. It measures the resistance to heat flow of your walls, ceilings, doors, windows, and skylights. Warm air seeks cooler temperatures – during the summer the outside heat moves inside, and in winter your nice, warm air flows upward to your attic and ultimately outside. For this reason, you want your home to have a high resistance to flow. This means your walls, etc, are insulated properly and prevent heat from flowing through them. A high resistance to flow also means your HVAC system doesn’t have to work as hard. Your home energy audit will include a written report estimating energy use based on local climate conditions, thermostat settings, roof overhang, and solar positioning and reveals the energy usage for any given time, as well as suggest improvements. If you have your billing statements handy for this chosen time period, you can improve the accuracy of these estimates as they have the total usage of energy your house consumes. The audit may also include a homeowner interview to see what your personal patterns are and can give you suggestions to better use your HVAC system. It may seem like a large upfront cost, the few hundred dollars for the estimate and then implementing the suggested changes to your home, but you will see a decrease in your heating and air conditioning bills that over time will cover the costs and then some. If you have not yet scheduled a fall tune-up or home energy audit, any of our ACDoctor certified contractors will be happy to take care of either of those for you!

With fall approaching, it is time to start thinking about having your HVAC unit serviced. Any time you have a contractor out to look at your unit, you need to have certain details handy. Whether it’s a routine service or a repair, your contractor needs to know everything, and no detail is too small. Even though you may just be getting your unit serviced for the impending heating season, you never know what a seemingly insignificant detail could uncover.
Have these facts handy when your contractor arrives:

• The brand, model number, and age of your system
• The last time it was serviced and who serviced it
• The date the filters were last changed
• If/when you first noticed your unit was not working properly
• Are there unusual noises, smells, or fluids coming from your unit?
• If it is acting up, what was the weather like when it first started?

Having this information handy could help the contractor diagnose the problem more quickly, saving you time and money!

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