If you use a gas furnace to heat your home, there is some potential for the furnace to become dangerous. Toxic gas and combustion dangers can occur if the furnace isn’t given proper regular care. It’s not difficult to avoid these hazards with a gas furnace, but it’s important to know about the possibilities.
What about air conditioning systems? Can an AC malfunction in a way that creates hazards for your home? The answer is yes, but they’re different from natural gas concerns. They occur with extremely old ACs, and the best way to avoid these problems is to make sure you don’t keep an air conditioner that’s long past its estimated service life, i.e. more than 15 years.
We’ll take a look at how an old air conditioning system can create health concerns.
You can look for many different signs that you have an over-the-hill air conditioner ready for a replacement. General age is a good measure: most ACs don’t last far beyond 15 years. You can also watch for declines in efficiency that create higher electric bills, or a run of expensive repairs that indicate a system approaching the end of the line.
One sign it’s time to repair your AC that is absolute is if it’s an R-22 unit. If you have an R-22 air conditioning system, arrange to have a replacement put in as soon as you can—otherwise, it will force you to replace it at some point when it’s much less convenient for you.
Southern California hasn’t traditionally been a location where generators for homes are common. People often think of generators as useful for places that experience extreme winters and unpredictable storm seasons.
But that’s changing, and generators are now a big topic for So. Cal homeowners. We work with generators and we’d like to recommend that 1) you install a generator for your house, and 2) you have a whole-house generator installed rather than rely on a portable one.
We’re probably going through the last spell of “cold” weather here in Southern California, and that means you’re in the final stretch of depending on your furnace on a regular basis. It’s also a time when a furnace is more likely to have malfunctions because of the accumulation of strain during the season. That fall maintenance visit seems distant, especially when you’re getting ready to schedule AC maintenance.
It’s a wise idea to keep a close watch on your furnace for signs it may be in trouble. Or in this case, a close listen. Odd sounds are one of the ways you can tell you may need professional repairs for your furnace.
Up to $1,500 Rebate for the Replacement of Your Older, Less-Efficient Central AC!
Older air conditioning (AC) units are expensive to operate, maintain, and fix when they break down.
Don’t get stuck in the heat! We’re offering a rebate up to $1,500 to help you replace your old, costly central AC unit before it breaks down. Older heat pumps may also be eligible.
This is BIG! Rebates like this don’t come along often. If your system is older or has not been consistently maintained over the years this offer is perfect for you. But remember rebate money is allocated on a first come basis. Call now to get your application in quickly!
Kilowatt install of heat pump systems in Studio City, CA
Why the big push to replace?
Three-quarters of all homes in the United States have air conditioners. Air conditioners use about 6% of all the electricity produced in the United States, at an annual cost of about $29 billion to homeowners. As a result, roughly 117 million metric tons of carbon dioxide are released into the air each year.
Air
conditioners employ the same operating principles and basic components
as your home refrigerator. Refrigerators use energy (usually
electricity) to transfer heat from the cool interior of the refrigerator
to the relatively warm surroundings of your home; likewise, an air
conditioner uses energy to transfer heat from the interior of your home
to the relatively warm outside environment.
An air conditioner
cools your home with a cold indoor coil called the evaporator. The
condenser, a hot outdoor coil, releases the collected heat outside. The
evaporator and condenser coils are serpentine tubing surrounded by
aluminum fins. This tubing is usually made of copper.
A pump,
called the compressor, moves a heat transfer fluid (or refrigerant)
between the evaporator and the condenser. The pump forces the
refrigerant through the circuit of tubing and fins in the coils.
The
liquid refrigerant evaporates in the indoor evaporator coil, pulling
heat out of indoor air and cooling your home. The hot refrigerant gas is
pumped outdoors into the condenser where it reverts back to a liquid,
giving up its heat to the outside air flowing over the condenser’s metal
tubing and fins.
Throughout the second half of the 20th century,
nearly all air conditioners used chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as their
refrigerant, but because these chemicals are damaging to Earth’s ozone
layer, CFC production stopped in the United States in 1995. Nearly all
air conditioning systems now employ halogenated chlorofluorocarbons
(HCFCs) as a refrigerant, but these are also being gradually phased out,
with most production and importing stopped by 2020 and all production
and importing stopped by 2030.
Production and importing of today’s
main refrigerant for home air conditioners, HCFC-22 (also called R-22),
began to be phased out in 2010 and will stop entirely by 2020. However,
HCFC-22 is expected to be available for many years as it is recovered
from old systems that are taken out of service. As these refrigerants
are phased out, ozone-safe hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are expected to
dominate the market, as well as alternative refrigerants such as
ammonia.
Ceiling fans are common parts of many homes in Southern California, and for good reason. A ceiling fan during the summer helps immensely with the heat, and at a much lower cost in electricity than running an air conditioner. Homes still need to have an effective central cooling system for the intense summer days, but a ceiling fan helps people feel cooler so the AC won’t need to run as much. On average, ceiling fans make it feel as if the temperature in the room is up to 10°F cooler than it is.
But here’s a little secret: those same ceiling fans in your house that you use throughout the summer—they can also help in cooler winter weather. Many homeowners don’t know this, but it’s a simple trick.
Well, that depends on who told you. You will eventually need a new furnace for your home, since even the most durable furnace heating system ever constructed will wear down over time until it’s no longer worth keeping around. But if someone who isn’t an HVAC professional told you something like, “Once your furnace is ten years old, you should replace it,” that’s not useful advice and may be flat wrong.
The only people whose advice you can trust when it comes to a central heating system like a furnace are licensed professionals. These are the folks with the training and history to help you make an informed decision. If you have reason to believe that heater repair in Burbank, CA isn’t enough to keep your furnace going and it’s time for a new heater, call our experts and we’ll help you make the decision. We aim for customer satisfaction and won’t try to sell you on any service you don’t require.
Summers in Southern California are long and hot, with the
heat often extending well into October. Air conditioning systems get extreme
workouts during this time—so much so that it may seem as if a home’s air
conditioner is always running from July onward.
But there’s a difference in an air conditioner that runs
frequently and one that is actually running constantly and never powering
down.
The compressor is the workhorse of an air conditioning
system. It’s like the engine—without it, nothing happens and an air conditioner
becomes a central fan blowing around room temperature air.
What happens when the compressor in your AC stops working
and it can’t be repaired? This is a serious situation, and you’ll have a number
of options to consider—one of which is to have the entire air conditioning
system replaced. Is this the best option, or are the other choices more cost-effective?
We experienced a colder than usual winter here in Southern California. That may sound funny to someone who lives in a part of the country where temperatures are below freezing for most of the season, but it certainly felt cold to us to have temperatures in the high 40s during the day. We’re all eager to get to the warmer weather… and that means some of us may not be planning for it.
We think it’s more important than ever to remind our customers and future customers about scheduling maintenance for their air conditioning systems in spring. Our maintenance plan makes it easy to have this essential job done (we’ll even send you a reminder!), so if you haven’t had a look at what the program offers you, take some time right now. We promise you, it’s worth it!
