Jan 7, 2014

Maximizing Your Heating and Air Conditioning System’s Performance



You may feel warm and cozy during the winter (or cool and comfy during the summer), but your wallet may be groaning due to your high energy bills.

According to the United States Energy Department, cooling and heating costs account for 56 percent of a household's monthly expenditure. As such, homeowners should take particular care in choosing a suitable heating and air conditioning system for their home. But apart from air conditioning and furnace installation, homeowners should make sure that their systems are working properly, and if need be, air conditioning or furnace replacement should be in order when these systems are starting to show signs of age and failure.


To maximize your comfort while minimizing energy costs, here are some helpful tips.

Whether you are planning to install a new system for your new home or considering upgrading your current one, the whole process begins with finding an experienced and reliable contractor. Homeowners should be aware that most contractors tend to specialize in a particular niche, with some focusing on kitchens and others having more expertise in bathrooms. The best specialists often have an energy auditor at their employ.

You may choose the most efficient heating and cooling system but this won't matter if you do not remedy problem areas within your home. This is why many homeowners can benefit from the services of energy auditors who are equipped and qualified to evaluate a property. Using equipment like blower doors, gas leak detectors, carbon monoxide detectors and kill-a-watt meters, these qualified professionals can identify areas in your house where hot or cool air can escape which, in turn, minimizes the efficiency of your cooling and heating system. By knowing where these problem areas are, you can remedy these problems at once and boost the efficiency of your heating and cooling systems.

What are these solutions?
Air sealing is particularly helpful for areas in the house where air typically escapes. Over time, these losses can amount to a significant expense. Typically, providing a solution to this common problem will pay for itself in just a few years in terms of annual savings.
You might also want to improve the insulation in your home, particularly along the walls and up the attic. Without proper insulation, your heating and cooling system have to work doubly hard to achieve a comfortable temperature level. Conversely, with the right insulation, you can slash your energy costs by about half.

If you utilize a water heater system in your home, you might want to invest in a programmable thermostat. Typically, a water heater will try to maintain a set temperature even if nobody is going to use water in the house. A thermostat will allow you to control the heater's temperature at set time periods, allowing you to enjoy the benefits of the heating system without paying a steep price.

About the Author: Kenneth Lawrence is a passionate "handyman". His craft involves DIY concepts and he would like to share guidelines and tips about stuff on home improvement. He writes and reads almost anything that can hone his skills and increase his knowledge about DIY concepts. His latest discovery is from http://www.ventwerx.com/.

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1 comment:

kimmy said...

it's still cold here in the Philippines at the moment, but in a couple of months, the heat will be terrible and we would need air conditioner very badly..

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