Handy Strategies For Emergency plumber - What's Needed

Excellent Advice About Hvac That You Will Want To Read

The HVAC system in your home is a component to having a nice living space. If it's too hot or cold, or you having no air blowing at all, the only thing that follows is misery. You know how expensive it is to fix, so it is vital that you prevent these things from occurring. Below there are many good tips to help you keep up with proper HVAC maintenance.

If you want to keep your air conditioning unit running efficiently, make sure you replace or clean the air filter once a month. Check the owner's manual on the a/c for instructions on how to clean the filter. Never run the unit when the filter is removed and let the filter dry before reinstallling it.

If you are having issues with your HVAC, do a tour of your house before you call in help. Pay attention to which areas of the house are warm and which ones are cool. The contractor can probably figure out and fix the problem easier.

When you are no longer using your outdoor air conditioning unit, be sure to protect it with a tight cover. This will keep it free of debris, frost and snow so that you'll have a working unit when the spring comes and you are ready to uncover it and use it again.

If your evaporator coil, found inside your home, becomes dirty, your unit will lose efficiency. Just pop off the front panel of the furnace and check to see that the coil is dry. Using a brush attachment on a vacuum, gently clean the coil of any dust or other debris.

To make sure your condenser fan works properly, keep the fan blades and the coils clean. Prior to working on or cleaning the unit, be sure to turn off the power. The outside condenser unit should be kept free of leaves and other debris.

When you are looking for a service provider to perform service on your HVAC system, look for a company that stands behind their work. This is especially important if your compressor or condenser is being repaired. Repairs to these two things are extremely expensive, so you want to ensure that the service provider warranties their work.

Clean your filters! If you have a window unit air conditioner, there will be a filter right under the grill you can vacuum. If you have a furnace or outdoor units, they will also have filters to be cleaned or replace. A dirty filter can make your unit inefficient or even let it overheat.

Get an estimate before agreeing to have any work done on your HVAC unit. This will help keep you from being surprised by a bill at the end. Any reputable technician should be able to look at your unit, determine the problem and give you an estimate as to how much it will cost to fix it.

Try to stay away from HVAC contractors that ask for upfront payments before they are willing to get started on the work they were hired to do. In many cases, this means that they are more concerned about getting paid than they are about making sure the job is done well.

Use plants to increase your air conditioner's effectiveness. An AC unit fully shaded by trees and shrubbery can operate up to 10 percent more efficiently. However, do keep spacing in mind. Air flow must not be constricted, and technicians need room to work when they come out to service your unit.

Any contractor that gives you a quote over the phone shouldn't be trusted. To truly evaluate your needs, they must come into your home and check it out basement to attic. If they make promises without even seeing your house, there is no way they'll be able to keep them.

If the HVAC unit makes a clicking noise, look immediately to see if there is an obstruction. Most of the time such a noise is created by an object striking the blades of the fan in the system. Simply clear away the debris or remove any foreign objects and your problem is solved. Before you call a technician, look at it yourself.

Always ask for references before you allow anyone to start doing work on your HVAC system. Call several of them to make sure that they are legitimate. Many people take the word of the contractor when it comes to customer satisfaction and that can prove to be a mistake in the end.

Call in a contractor to find out if you can install an air conditioner on your current forced-air system without having to install new duct work. This can save you a ton of time and money, plus it takes up less space in your walls and rooms to boot.

Inspect your HVAC unit quickly for blockage if you become away of any clicking sound. Often the issue is some sort of debris that's hitting the fans in the cooling system. Cleaning the debris will likely stop the noise. Check the fan and coil before you waste time contacting a professional.

When you hire a contractor to do a job, be sure to listen to what they tell you. For example, they can give you advice on how to keep your HVAC in working order. Ask about maintenance tips and how often you should be cleaning or servicing the unit.

When buying an air conditioner, you want to find out with a SEER rating of 13 or higher. check here 13 is the minimum standard set by the government, so higher ratings, while not mandatory, are going to offer you better efficiency. SEER ratings can go as high as 19, so keep this in mind as you shop.

Is your home's electrical set-up ready to handle a new air conditioning unit? Most homes have 115-volt circuits in place, but larger air conditioners need 230-volts to be used. Some smaller units may need their own dedicated circuit as well to ensure your home doesn't go dark when you turn them on.

It is no very difficult to understand HVAC if you have the information provided in this article. This is something that you need to do your homework on though. With luck, things will work out well.

Can the AC filter in your home, office or local mall protect you from Covid-19?

When New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced last week that malls in New York could not reopen until they installed high-efficiency particulate air filters capable of trapping the virus that causes Covid-19, Harvard environmental health researcher Joseph Gardner Allen was thrilled.

"I've been writing consistently since early February about how healthy buildings should be the first line of defense against the novel coronavirus," said Allen, who directs the Healthy Buildings program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

"I'm really grateful that we have a leader in the country -- somewhere -- who was finally talking about healthy buildings, ventilation and filtration," Allen said. "That hasn't happened before. It just hasn't happened."

A push to action

Allen was one of 239 scientists who wrote an open letter to the World Health Organization, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies, asking for a change in their guidance to the public on how the novel coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2, can spread.

Current guidance only focuses on "hand washing, maintaining social distancing, and droplet precautions," according to the letter, published Monday in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

The health agencies are ignoring the tiny droplets of virus that sputter and spray from our mouths, become aerosolized and then float away into the air, the scientists said, as a likely means of transmission.

"They don't want to talk about airborne transmission because that is going to make people afraid," co-author Donald Milton, a professor of environmental health at the University of Maryland, told CNN in a prior interview.

"The best vaccine against fear is knowledge and empowering people to take care of themselves," Milton said. "Why wearing a mask is important is because it blocks the aerosols at their source, when it is easy to block them."

MERV ratings

In his edict to New York mall owners, Cuomo was talking about HEPA filters, which have the highest MERV ratings, between 17 and 20.

What's MERV? It stands for "minimum efficiency reporting value," and it's how filters are rated in their ability to trap tiny particles. The MERV ratings go from one to 20: Filters with higher MERV ratings are more effective than filters with lower ratings.

At the highest end, HEPA filters are used by hospitals to create sterile rooms for surgeries and to control infectious diseases, and are able to remove 99.97% of dust, pollen, mold, bacteria and other airborne particles with a size as small as 0.3 microns. For comparison, Covid-19 is thought to be between 0.06 to 1.4 microns.

"Filters are rated at their worst performance, so 99.97% is the worst it will do," Allen said. "And that's rated for a particle size of 0.3 microns, but smaller and larger it actually does better. So the point is that it's capturing nearly all particles."

Unfortunately, most businesses and home owners may find it difficult to retrofit their existing system to accommodate a HEPA filter, or any filter higher than the rating recommended by the system's manufacturer.

Doing so can actually impair the system's performance: Smaller pores in HEPA air filters make it more difficult for it to push air. Using denser filters can affect the efficiency of the unit and strain the fan, while decreasing indoor air quality -- the opposite of what you desire.

"HEPA filtration is not always going to be feasible or practical," Allen said. "But there are other filters that can do the job. What is recommended now by the standard setting body for HVAC is a MERV 13 filter."

High-efficiency filters in the 13-to-16 MERV range are often used in hospitals, nursing homes, research labs and other places where filtration is important.

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